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THE 

HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY, 

4> 3 6 
POSITIOlf AND PROSPECTS. 



THE SUBSTANCE OF AN ADDRESS, DELIVERED AT A MEETING OF 

THE SHAREHOLDERS, IN THE LONDON TAVERN, 

ON THE 24th JANUARY, 1866. 



BY 

JAMES DODDS. 



TOiti) a ifHap. 



SECOND THOUSAND. 



LONDON : 
EDWAED STANFOED, 6, CHAEINa CEOSS, S.W. 

AND 

A. H. BAILY & CO. 3, EOYAL EXCHANGE BUILDINGS, E.C. 

1866. 



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PREFACE. 

A WISH having been expressed for the publication, in 
a revised and authentic form, of the following Address 
on the Hudson's Bay Company, I have reproduced, as 
near as memory served me, the portions that were 
actually delivered. But, I have also added several 
points which I intended to bring forward, but forbore, 
from an anxiety not to trespass upon the time of the 
audience — the busy men of the busiest city in the 
world at a still busy period of the day. 

The principal authorities (independent of some 
private informants on whose accuracy I could rely), 
from which I have dra\Aai my facts, are the following: — 

Paeliamentaey Papees : — 

Hudson's Bay Company ..... 1850 

Eeport from Select Committee on Hudson's Bay Company . 1857 
Hudson's Bay Company's Charter and Licences . . 1859 

Conferences between Her Majesty's Government and Deputation 

from Executive Council of Canada . . . 1865 

Hind's Canadian Expedition into Kupert's Land, &c. . 1860 
Palliser's Exploration of British North America . 1859-60-63-65 
Index and Maps to Captain Palliser's Reports . . 1865 

Hind's Narrative of Canadian Exploring Expeditions . 1860 

Hudson's Bay Company's Eeports from 28th November . 186-1 

Martin's Hudson's Bay Territories .... 1849 

Fitzgerald's Examination of Hudson's Bay Company 

Monro's British North America 

Dinsmore's American Railway Guide 

Nor'Wester Newspaper of Eed Eiver . 

EusseU's Canada .... 

Eawlings' Eoute from Atlantic to Pacific Ocean 

Eowe's American and Australian Colonies 

Lord Selkirk's British Fur- Trade in North America 

Berghaus' Chart of the World . 

Journal of Society of Arts 

Statesmen's Year Book .... 



1849 
1864 
November, 1865 
1865 
1865 
1865 
1864 
1816 
1863 
March, 1861 
1866 



IV PREFACE. 

I was much assisted at the Meetmg "by being able to 
refer to the large niap of the Territory belonging to the 
Company, and which was most readily and kindly lent 
for the occasion by the Directors ; and now the readers 
of this publication will be equally assisted by the ac- 
companying map, prepared and executed in Mr. 
Stanford's establishment. Coming from such a quarter, 
its fidelity can be absolutely depended upon, and every 
care has been taken to make it clearly illustrative of 
the letter-press. Only leading places are shown, so as 
not to burden attention with what is insignificant or 
irrelevant ; and by varieties of tinting the great cha- 
racteristic features of the country are brought pro- 
minently before the mind. 

The patient and cordial attention of the Meeting at 
the London Tavern, composed chiefly of city men, whose 
every minute was valuable, was a sufficient reward for 
my small labours. I hope, in this published form, the 
Address may continue to be useful and stimulating to 
my fellow-shareholders, who have need, at this turning- 
point in the Company's afPairs, of knowledge, union, and 
decision, to see that their interests are not lost by delay, 
intrigue, or weakness, and that the resources of their 
splendid property are fully developed. 

The Gentlemen who convened and conducted the 
Meeting are anxious to give a short account of their 
stewardship to the body of the shareholders, by whom 
they were so respectably supported on that occasion. 
This will be found in a Statement at the end of the 
pamplilet. 

J. D. 

18, Ahingdun Street, West minster, March, 1866. 



THE HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY 



I HOPE when you have heard me, I shall stand ac- 
quitted of any charge of presumption in coming forward 
to open the proceedings of this meeting by an Address 
upon the position and prospects of the Hudson's Bay 
Company. 

I was led by accidental causes to bestow some atten- 
tion upon this subject; and the gentlemen who have 
convened this meeting thought it might be of use if I 
were to lay before my fellow-shareholders the results of 
my investigation. It might diffuse information amongst 
those who had not time and opportunity to prosecute the 
study for themselves ; and might guide the way to further 
deliberations upon the new interests and new relations 
of the Company. 

I beg to state distinctly at the outset, that I am not 
here to raise up any party in the Company, or to utter 
any reproaches or recriminations against the Directors. 
They have chosen to maintain a reserve, a silence, some 
call it a mystery, which I believe has been unsatisfactory 
and displeasing to many of the shareholders. But I 
have no doubt when the time comes that they can make 
a clean breast, they will be able to satisfy us that they 
have not been actuated by any pedantic stiffness and 
pride, but have been tongue-tied out of regard to ulterior 
interests which might be damaged by premature dis- 
closures and discussions. 

In consequence of this inveterate silence however, the 
shareholders are left to themselves, without chart or 

B 



2 THE HUDSON S BAY COMPANY. 

compass, and must do the best they can m watchmg 
the com'se of events, and m urgmg the adoption of 
some more defined and decided measm'es for the common 
protection and welfare. 

We have been for years approaching an extraordinary 
crisis in our affairs ; we are now thoroughly involved in 
it ; we must adapt our antiquated and semi-barbarous 
fashions to the requirements of modern civilization; and 
upon our prudence or weakness as a Company for the 
next two years, will depend — whether we shall sink in 
decrepitude and contempt, or soar to a higher pinnacle 
of prosperity than ever, carrying along with us the pro- 
gress and improvement of humanity. 

That you may have before you at once the whole 
topics in connection with the Company on which I am 
to address you, 1 have to premise that I shall — 

FiEST — Describe their territory. 

Second — Explain their title. 

Third — Sketch their history. 

Fourth — Notice the circumstances at woik which 

must precipitate a change of policy. 
Fifth — Consider what ought to be the new policy. 

I. Tpie Territory. 

This Territory has no one established name in geo- 
graphy. Its name will be a creation of the future. In 
the Charter of the Company (to which I shall have to 
refer), it was called Rupert's Land ; it has been com- 
monly styled the Hudson's Bay Territory ; and in old 
geographies I see that some portion of it at one time 
bore the name of New Britain — a name which I hope 
may yet be revived. I shall generally speak of it under 
the chartered name of Rupert's Land. 



THE TERRITORY. 3 

Rupert's Land occupies the central mass of British 
America, and is bounded by Canada and the Atlantic 
on the east, by the Arctic Ocean on the north, on the 
west by the Eocky ]\Iountains, British Columbia, and 
the large unallotted Indian Territory, and on the south 
by the Boundary-line of the United States. Although 
as yet imperfectly surveyed, we may take the area about 
2^ millions of square miles — nearly equal to all Europe 
counting, out Russia. The population is miserably dis- 
proportionate to the size, being only about 100,000, 
including some 11,000 whites and half-breeds, the rest 
being various tribes of Indians. 

You will observe that a chain of lakes and lake- 
rivers runs through this Territory from the south-east, 
near the water-shed of Lake Superior, in a north-westerly 
direction towards the Arctic Ocean. This is the Lake 
Region. To the east, or Atlantic side, is the Granite ; 
to the west, or Rocky Mountain side, is the Prairie 
Region. 

There are then three geological regions or sub-divi- 
sions in Rupert's Land — the Granite, the Lake, and the 
Prairie. 

The Granite region, (near four-fifths of the whole 
territory in extent,) seems to be chiefly composed, as its 
name denotes, of the granitic and other primitive rocks. 
It has been summarily depicted, on slight observation, 
as bare^ rugged, and desolate. Further acquaintance 
is modifying that view, for it is more and more found 
to be variegated with rich valleys and fine picturesque 
spots. For the present however we may lay it out of 
view, as a place for anything like immediate agricul- 
tural settlement. 

It must not however be supposed to be a useless 
country. Far from it. It has always been one of the 

B 2 



THE Hudson's bay company. 



chief haunts of the fur-bearing animals — one of the 
chief seats of our Fur- trade; and it is expected by all 
geologists, that it will yet be found stored with the 
most valuable minerals — iron and copper, and perhaps 
gold. They have lately discovered gold in the same 
formation, on the American side, west of Lake Su- 
perior. 

The two other regions {Lake and Prairie)^ lying to 
the west of the Granite, and stretching to the Eocky 
Mountains by a succession of slopes or terraces rising 
from 600 to 3000 feet above the sea-level, may be 
taken together ; for though they have many geological 
diversities, they are substantially the same in soil and 
produce, being generally composed of soft materials, 
overlaid with a rich vegetable mould, from a few inches 
to several feet in thickness. From geological descrip- 
tions they seem very much to resemble in structure and 
quality the South of England, from Devonshire to 
Sussex and Kent. 

The Lake and Prairie regions are now commonly 
known as the Basin of Lake Winnipeg, for all their 
streams and rivers flow into that Lake — a capacious 
inland sea of fr-esh- water, 300 miles long, and 50 broad, 
400 miles at the nearest point south-west of Hudson's 
Bay. The Winnipeg Eiver and its feeders from the 
Canadian side— the Red River, from near the springs 
of the Mississippi —the Assiniboine, ft'om the heart of 
the Prairies— the North and South Saskatchewans, fr'om 
the innermost defiles of the Rocky Mountains— all pour 
their volumes into the reservoir of Lake Winnipeg. 

This Winnipeg Basin contains about 400,000 square 
miles, all, with one exception, more or less capable of 
cultivation, and which no doubt will in the course 
of ages, become a varied and interesting and fi'uitful 



THE TERRITORY. 



country. The one exception consists of a spur of the 
Great American Desert, which penetrates for about 
120 miles into the south-west corner of Eupert's Land. 
This, which in the United States is a long, wide, arid 
desert, spreading in melancholy waste the whole length 
of the continent, and from the valley of the Missis- 
sippi-Missouri, to the Eocky Mountains, and thence 
to the Pacific, over no less than 1,000,000 square miles, 
nearly one-third of the whole United States, can scarcely, 
when it passes the boundary-line into Eupert's Land, 
be described as a desert ; it becomes so mitigated in 
its sterile qualities, and interspersed with so many 
spots of verdure and abundant vegetation. In Eu- 
pert's Land it ought rather to be called, in distinction 
from the real American desert, by the name it used to 
receive from the old French voyageurs, the Couteau — 
meaning by that, I suppose, a country marked by sharp 
ridges. This Couteau-grovLU^ is so diversified in quality, 
and so irregular in its outline, that it is difficult to say 
what extent is decidedly inferior land ; but we shall 
put the proportion high — say 50,000 square miles — 
which would still leave in the Winnipeg Basin 350,000 
square miles, or 214,000,000 acres, capable of beneficial 
cultivation — about as much as France and Spain put 
together. 

But these immense quantities must be left for a 
distant posterity to deal with ; for the purposes of the 
day we must come down to more measurable amounts. 

This same Winnipeg Basin comprehends that zone 
'or tract of country now so well kno^vn as the Fertile 
Belt of Eupert's Land — a tract of country, as its very 
title implies, which travellers and scientific explorers 
declare to be unsm-passed for fertility, productiveness, 
beauty, and adaptation for industrial settlement: — ''In 



6 THE HUDSON S BAY COMPANY. 

some parts," says Captain Palliser, Commander of the 
British Government's Expedition of 1857-60, a man who 
indulges in no rhetorical flom'ishes — "in some parts 
rivalling the finest park scenery of om' own country.'' 

The Fertile Belt, varying in breadth, enters Rupert's 
Land with the course of the Eed Eiver, about the 96th 
meridian, girdles that River on both sides, turns to the 
north-west between the Assiniboine and Lake Winni- 
peg, follows the valley of the Saskatchewan to the west, 
but on approaching the ridges of the Eocky Mountains 
turns round to the south-west, and falls back again, 
about the 114th meridian, into the boundary line of the 
United States. It describes a sort of semicircle, and 
we may call it the " Bainhoio of Eupert's Land," — 
the fore- token of its future splendour and prosperity. 

The Fertile Belt contains about 65,000 square miles, 
or upwards of 40,000,000 acres, considerably more than 
England and Wales. But even this will require some 
generations fully to develope and people. We must 
again, for immediate purposes, reduce om^selves to a 
smaller amount of land. 

We come at last to a manageable area — to certain 
portions of the Fertile Belt which have been minutely 
explored and surveyed by Professor Hind, one of the 
Canadian Commissioners in 1858, and described by him 
as extending to about 22,000,000 acres, — being larger 
than Ireland — land of the first quality in the world for 
agricultural and grazing uses, ready waiting for the 
plough and spade, and for myriads of sheep and cattle. 

In my subsequent remarks on land, I must always 
be understood, unless otherwise expressed, as referring 
not to the all but illimitable spaces of Eupert's Land, 
with which posterity must be left to deal, but to this 
restricted area of first-class land, 22,000,000 acres, 



THE TERRITORY. 7 

which even the present generation may see, are ahnost 
sure to see, converted into the abodes of industry and 
plenty, waving with grain and white with flocks, covered 
with large and thriving towns, and filled with the stir 
and sound of (I hope) an active, bold and educated, a 
free and sound-hearted population. 

The climate of the Fertile Belt is much finer than the 
eastern or Atlantic side of the Territory. The Winni- 
peg Basin in fact, taking the whole year together, is 
more genial than Canada, and many of the eastern 
States of America. It is very happily situated for the 
benignant operation of atmospheric influences. From 
the south come up the warm currents of the Gulf of 
Mexico, which, gliding over the low water-shed of the 
Mississippi, continue to drop fatness in the vallies of the 
Red River and Winnipeg, to the very mouth of the Sas- 
katchewan. On the west again the country is equally 
favoured by what we, in our ignorance of first causes, 
call a freak of Nature. A great dip or depression takes 
place in the Rocky Mountains just at the boundary line 
(the 49th parallel), and through this hollow pass, scooped 
out by Nature, pour the balmy and fostering gales of 
the Pacific, which circulate all over the prairies and 
float down the Saskatchewan, at the mouth of which 
they meet and mingle with the southern currents, 
already mentioned, coming up from the Mississippi. 
Both these radiations of tropical heat, the southern 
and the western, from time to time encounter the pre- 
vailing northern winds, which descend keen and fierce 
from the caverns of perpetual ice ; and being chilled by 
the contact, condense into heavy clouds, and precipitate 
themselves, sometimes in torrents of rain, sometimes in 
light and refreshing showers, over the whole regions 
which compose the Winnipeg Basin. Hence the mois- 



8 THE HUDSON S BAY COMPANY. 

tiire and teeming vegetation which characterise the 
whole of this country, and, notwithstanding the severity 
of its winter, the length, the warmth^ the prolificness, 
the beauty of its summers. Its summer isothermal 
passes through the Azores and the centre of France. 
The country produces almost every crop and every 
plant which belong to the Temperate zone, and that 
with a fulness, fineness, and luxuriance which few of 
our northern kingdoms can equal. 

Besides the richness of its vegetable growth, the whole 
Territory is no doubt amply stored with minerals. 
But I do not dwell upon this, because our present 
object is more particularly to bring out its capability for 
agricultural settlement ; and as there has been nothing 
like a mineral survey made, only scattered and super- 
ficial observations, our information on that branch of 
its resources remains meagre and indefinite. However, 
I may as well notice in passing, that traces of mineral 
have been perceived almost everywhere. Iron and 
copper in the Granite region, and gold has lately 
been discovered on the American side, to the west of 
Lake Superior, and no doubt will soon be tiaced in 
ours. Limestone on the Eed Eiver. Salt springs all 
through the prairies. Coal near the Couteau-ground on 
the frontier. Iron and coal on the Saskatchewan, and 
now also the cry of gold on the Saskatchewan is begin- 
ning to be raised. 

Rupert's Land has the golden domains of British 
Columbia, the mineral wealth and maritime capabilities 
of Vancouver's Island, immediately on its west. It has 
a brotherhood of hardy and thriving British provinces, 
Canada taking the lead, and the means of continuous 
water communication with the Atlantic on the east. 
On the south it has the young swarming hives of 



THE TERRITORY. 9 

American States, with the broad bosom of the Mississippi 
inviting commerce, with access to the network of rail- 
ways now converging upon Minnesota. It stands almost 
midway between the toiling, hard-working, money- 
making, and money-spending nations of Em'ope, and the 
ancient civilizations, the rare and highly coveted 
treasures of the East, and midway also to the new-born 
and richly productive continents and islands of the South 
Pacific. The time is perhaps not far distant when, by 
this Territory being opened up, the British traveller, or 
British merchandise, may pass from London to Canton, 
to Nangasaki, to Auckland, to Sydney, or make the 
return, without ever quitting British soil, or only quit- 
ting it for the great ocean, the free common pathw^ay of 
all nations. 

The Red River Settlement is the one solitaiy little 
colony in all this Territory, now half a century old, 
10,000 strong, with its Selkirk town, named after its 
founder (of whom more anon), baptized in blood, 
cradled in the blast — the child of scorn, neglect, ad- 
versity ; yet struggling into manhood, full of free bold 
life, growing into a settled community, with smiling 
farms, well-filled shops, steamers plying upon the river, 
its little ''Nor'-wester" newspaper, racy of the soil, 
schools that would put many of our own to shame, and 
churches where every variety of worshippers offer up 
their prayers as their own soul dictates, with no one 
to make them afraid. The Prairies undulating west 
and north-west of the Red River can be easily tra- 
versed in all directions with waggons or on horseback. 
The rivers roll almost without interruption for thou- 
sands of miles, and capable of being navigated, fr'om 
the Canadian Lakes and the head-waters of the Missis- 
sippi into the very shadows of the Rocky Mountains. In 



10 THE Hudson's bay company. 

time the Iron Highway from our own country to China, 
Japan, New Zealand, Australia, and for that part to 
India, will span the Fertile Belt — the only practicable 
I'oute, it is now believed, across the American continent 
to join the Atlantic and Pacific. A new Empire will 
burst from the soil, which now knows only the feet of 
wandering Indians and the tramp of long herds of buffalo. 

11. The Title. 

In the 16th and 17th centuries all the famous naviga- 
tors and discoverers were bending their sails to the 
West, over the Atlantic main, to find there the gateway 
into India, and that East which had long haunted every 
mind with dreams of almost unearthly wealth and 
gorgeousness. Seeking a land of fable, they found what 
has turned out to be a land of the most glorious reality 
— the Continent of America. All the great powers of 
Europe soon filled its Atlantic sea-board, for beyond 
the sea-board, into the unknown forests and wildernesses, 
they could scarcely be said for many ages to penetrate. 
Spain took possession of South America and of Florida. 
England had all the intervening country from Florida 
to Canada ; and Canada was held by the French. 

There still remained a wide territory to the north of 
Canada. That was entered m 1610 by Henry Hudson, 
who gave his name to the famous Bay, and who took 
possession of the territory in the name of the Crown of 
England. 

For many years no regard was paid to this extreme 
northern part of the continent. People were doubtless 
deterred from visiting it by its supposed Arctic and 
dismal character. At length a body of merchants and 
adventurers, under the patronage of Prince Eupert, 
second cousin of Charles II. directed some expeditions 



THE TITLE. 11 

into that quarter ; and being impressed with its resources, 
and with the notion that they would find in that di- 
rection a North-west passage to the Pacific, they applied 
for and obtained a Charter from the Crown in 1670, 
constituting them into the Hudsoris Bay Company, 

This is the title by which we still hold our possessions 
and rights. 

AVith the Charter most of the shareholders have lately 
become familiar, and I shall run very rapidly over its 
leading provisions. 

1st. There are the usual incorporating powers to 
carry out the purposes of the Charter. 

2nd. Powers of management and direction, but of a 
wonderfully liberal and popular character, throwing the 
whole real power into the hands of the shareholders, 
without proxies, only those personally present at the 
Court Meetings. 

3rd. The grant of exclusive trade, not in furs only 
(which in fact are not specified), but in all kinds of trade 
by land or water, and in fisheries and mines. 

This clause declares, that the Territory shall be one 
of the British ''^plantations or colonies in America," and 
shall be called '' Eupert's Land." 

4th. There is the grant of the absolute property of 
the Territory; ''the Governor and Company" being 
'' the true and absolute Igrds and proprietors of the 
same territory," holding in freehold of the royal manor 
of East Greenwich in Kent. Ex facie then as good, 
sure and indefeasible a title as any held by the Duke of 
Bedford, or the Marquis of AVestminster, or any other 
the most undoubted proprietor in the kingdom. 

A loose objection has been raised, that the title is un- 
certain, but there is no such uncertainty. When the 
grant is carefully anahsed, it is found, as Sir Samuel 



12 THE Hudson's bay company. 

Eomillj and other eminent counsel pointed out long 
ago, to amount to a grant of all land, territory and 
other subjects loithin the water-shed of Hudsoris Bay, 
This is a perfectly good and clear description. A water- 
shed is quite capable of being accurately traced 
and laid down. According to my recollection of title- 
deeds, this of a water-shed is a common bounding 
description of the estates of very large proprietors. If 
there be any vagueness at any point of the water-shed, 
that vagueness is removed and cured by the com^se of 
possession that follows upon the title. 

This title has been the subject of critical dissection, 
and the subject of opinions of counsel for upwards of a 
hundred years, and by this time we should pretty well 
know what is the net result of all this keen and prac- 
tised scrutiny. I believe it comes to this : — 

(1) Almost all the jurists have agreed, that the title 
to the freehold is valid and mdisputable ; it is a perfect 
freehold title to the land. 

(2) They have almost equally agreed, that the grant 
of exclusive trade is invalid; that the Crown alone 
could make no such grant, and that it would have re- 
quired for its confirmation the sanction of Parliament. 

(3) Many jurists have also doubted the validity of 
the grant of general exclusive government and jurisdic- 
tion over the territory, and affirm that the Cro^vii could 
not^ without the concm-rence of Parliament, make over 
such a delegation of the public authority. 

At the same time they acknowledge that, although 
the Charter does not carry exclusive trade, yet the 
Company, as sole owners of the land, had a right to 
exclude trespassers, and thus might secure, in a different 
form, something like exclusive trade ; and that, although 
the Charter does not carry exclusive jurisdiction, yet 



THE TITLE. 13 

tlie Company, as sole owners of tlie land, had a right to 
make and execute lawful bye-laws and regulations 
amongst their servants, agents, tenants and assignees, 
and thus might exercise, in a different form, something 
like exclusive jurisdiction. But in neither case, under 
the Charter, only as owners of the land. 

The freehold good— the monopoly bad — the jurisdic- 
tion more than doubtful — the Company therefore only 
legally incorporated to the effect of holding, disposing 
of, and managing the land — this comes to be about the 
result of the opinions of all the most eminent counsel 
for the last hundred years. 

It may here be noticed, that the Company has 
hitherto relied and acted on those grants of the Charter 
now held to be illegal — the exclusive trade and jurisdic- 
tion; and has made little or no use, has in fact ignored 
and carefully and purposely thrown aside, the alone 
grant which was legal — the freehold right to the land. 

The freehold of two-and-a-half millions of square 
miles ! No doubt this sounds to the ear prodigious — a 
freehold in a Continent nearly as large as Europe. This 
result could not be foreseen or contemplated by the 
original grantor and grantees, to whom the interior was 
enveloped in darkness. But the conveyance was a suffi- 
cient warrant; and time, events, and possession have 
swelled out and knit together this magnificent inheritance. 
The one sole estate of the kind now remainina^ in the 
world — a private Corporation, lord of two-and-a-half 
millions of square miles. But magnitude has no effect 
upon title. The vastness of an estate cannot weaken the 
force of the Charter. A good title is a good title, 
whether it be for a cottage or a continent. 



14 THE Hudson's bay company, 



III. The History, 



I do not mean to go at large into this history, but 
only into so much of it as tends to illustrate — 

(1.) That the Hudson's Bay Company formerly were 
not unfavourable to settlements within their territory. 

(2.) That, though certain rivals and antagonists from 
an early period, and though at a later period certain 
Canadian partisans, and latterly the Canadian Govern- 
ment, have kept up a running fire of cavils against the 
Company's title, they have either been defeated, or have 
failed, and have positively refused, when opportunity 
was given to them, and when they were challenged 
to the combat, to raise and try the question of the 
Company's Charter. 

(3.) That the Imperial Government have always re- 
spected and supported our title, have on all occasions 
declared that they have no ground to challenge it, and 
have always made it a condition of any diplomatic 
negotiation about a transfer of the possession of Rupert's 
Land, that arrangements should first of all be come to 
with the Hudson's Bay Company. 

1670. 

For many years, after taking possession under the 
Charter, the Company do not seem to have pushed their 
establishments much beyond the shores of Hudson's Bay; 
but the natives came down from all parts of the interior, 
and brought skins and furs and similar articles, re- 
ceiving in exchange the various goods which they 
required. The natives were in fact the Company's 
hunters and trappers, acting in their employment ; and 
such use and occupation by the natives on their account 



THE HISTORY. 15 

was really the possession of the territory by tlie Com- 
pany — the only kind of possession of which it was then 
susceptible; for agricultural or any other civilized mode 
of settlement was at that distant period entirely out of 
the question. 

It is quite true, that at this time the boundary be- 
tween Rupert's Land and the French colony of Canada, 
was not precisely fixed, nor has it ever been precisely 
fixed. But this is not peculiar to Eupert's Land. There 
are few neighbouring countries in the world that have 
their boundary-lines absolutely and exactly settled ; 
there are almost always some disputed points, some 
questions of rectification. The Company have offered 
over and over again to concur with Canada in submit- 
ting the question of boundary to any competent court, 
or to arbitration ; but the Canadians on one pretence 
and another have always held back, or refiised. It has 
been their game apparently to fight in the shadow, to 
fish in troubled water ; and by stirring up doubts and 
uncertainties, and never bringing them to a solution, 
either to frighten the Company into some rash compro- 
mise, or to mislead the British Government to aid and 
abet them in their hollow pretensions and unjust designs. 
Hitherto they have been foiled : — and so they will be, 
so long as the (Company have manliness, and the British 
Government a sense of justice — which I hope will be 
for ever. 

The French in Canada had an evil eye against this 
new-arrived Company of British adventurers, who were 
planting themselves so firm on the northern teiTitory. 
Taking advantage of the unfixed state of the boundaries, 
they not only roved and hunted over the whole territory 
without regard to boundary, but, insolent in their mili- 
tary force against a few comparatively defenceless 



Ifj THE Hudson's bay company. 

traders, they frequently marauded to the very shores 
of Hudson's Bay, and burned down, plundered and 
spoiled the forts and factories of the Company. In a 
few years upwards of £120,000 worth of the Company's 
property was thus destroyed ; but somehow they flou- 
rished bravely notwithstanding, commonly dividing 50 
per cent., and often trebling their capital without the 
shareholders paying any subscription. 

I notice these old maraudings of the Canadian French, 
because it is very much on these that the later Canadians 
have endeavoured to fabricate some kind of claim to a 
great part, if not the whole of the Hudson's Bay 
Territory. A respectable origin certainly, for a claim 
of proprietorship ! as if somebody were to claim an 
estate in Norfolk, because his grandfather and great- 
grandfather long ago used to poach there, and shoot 
the partridges and pheasants, and occasionally a trouble- 
some gamekeeper who came out to prevent them. In 
these poachings and maraudings there was not a vestige 
of legality, and no legal right could accrue to any one 
from such unwarranted and predatory incursions. 

1748. 

The first recorded attempt, so far as I have seen, 
was made this year to challenge the validity of the 
Company's Charter, and have it declared void. 

This was by a Petition to the Crown on the part of 
certain '' Subscribers for finding out a passage to the 
Western and Southern Oceans of America," praying for 
incorporation, and for possession in fact of the same 
territories as were contained in the Hudson's Bay Charter. 
The latter Company of course opposed them. 

The petition was referred to the Privy Council, and 
was again by them referred to the attorney and solicitor- 



THE HISTORY. 17 

general of the day, Sir Dudley Ryder, and William 
Murray, afterwards the celebrated Lord Mansfield, who 
heard counsel both for the Petitioners and for the 
Hudson's Bay Company. 

Their Report, dated 10th August 1748, sets forth — 

" The Petitioners insisted on two general things, that the Company's 
Charter was either void in its original creation, or became forfeited by 
the Company's conduct under it." 

* * * * 

" As to the first, the Petitioners endeavoured to show that the grant 
of the country and territories included in the Company's Charter was 
void for the uncertainty of its extent, being bounded by no limits of 
mountains, rivers, seas, latitude or longitude ; and that the grant of tlie 
exclusive trade within such limits as these were, was a monopoly, and 
void on that account. 

" With respect to both these, considerhig how long the Company have 
enjoyed and acted under this Charter ivithout interruption or encroachment, 
we cannot think it advisable for his Majesty to make any express or 
implied declaration against the validity of it till there has been some 
judgment of a Court of Justice to warrant it." 

* * * # 

** As to the supposed forfeiture of the Company's Charter by nonuser 
or abuser, the charge upon that head is of several sorts, viz. that they 
have not discovered, nor sufficiently attempted to discover the North- 
west passage into the South Seas or Western Ocean ; that they have not 
extended their settlements through the limits of their Charter ; tliat they 
have designedly confined their trade to a very narrow compass ; and have 
for that purpose abused the Indians, neglected their own forts, ill-treated 
their own servants, and encouraged the French. 

"But on consideration of all the evidence laid before us by many 

affidavits on both sides we think these charges are either not 

sufficiently supported in point of fact, or in a great measure accounted for 
from the nature or circumstances of the case." 

The Crown acted upon and confirmed this Report ; 
the Petition was refused, and the Company left in undis- 
turbed enjoyment of their property and rights. 

By this solemn State-proceeding the Crown ac- 
knowledged — 

a. That the Hudson's Bay Company had then^ for 78 
years (from 1G70 to 1748), possessed the territory 
" witliout interruption or encroachment.'" Contrary to the 
allegations of recent writers, having no such means of 
ancient knowledge, venting guesses for facts, tliat the 
possession of the Company was interrupted, encroached 
upon, and defeated from the very beginning. 

(J 



18 THE Hudson's bay company. 

h. That, even if the extent of the Charter was origm- 
ally uncertam as to limits, it was now rendered certain, 
and the limits legally defined, by long and uninterrupted 
possession. 

c. That (so far differing I admit from a later Opinion, 
to which I shall afterwards advert,) the same lengthened 
possession had confirmed and validated the grant of 
exclusive trade. 

cZ. That, under the conditions in which they have been 
placed, the Company had not lost right to any portions 
of their territory in consequence of their not fully oc- 
cupying or using them. 

e. That they had not given up to the Canadian French, 
or been legally deprived by them of any portion of 
territory belonging to the Company under the Charter. 

1763. 

The French now made a total surrender of Canada to 
the British, so there was no longer any conflict of 
government. The whole American continent became 
British from the Arctic ocean to Florida ; and Canada, 
equally with Eupert's Land, was a colony or province 
subject to the British Crown. 

1783. 

For many years, however, after the surrender of 
Canada, multitudes of the inhabitants continued, after 
the old French fashion, to roam and hunt and maraud 
over the North and North-west territories, without any 
distinction whether the territory was Canadian, or 
belonged to the Hudson's Bay Company. These poach- 
ings took a head in 1783, when the North- West Com- 
pany of Canada was formed, chiefly as a fur-tradhig 
Company ; and its adventurous spirits at once flung 



THE HISTORY. 19 

themselves broad- cast into the territory, in defiance of 
the Hudson's Bay Company, hmiting and trading up to 
the Bay itself, and along the western prairies and river- 
courses, over the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific. Such 
a daring and formidable competition, instead of cowing, 
roused up the Hudson's Bay Company to equal deter- 
mination. They came down from their more northern 
retreats, encountered their rivals on the broad hunting 
grounds, and by stratagem and by force tried to expel 
them. The hunters on both sides became soldiers ; 
the Indian was called in with his tomahawk, as well as 
his bow and arrow ; murderous attacks, bloody battles, 
cruel massacres ensued ; and the herds of buffalo were 
grazing in safety, whilst the ^Yh.ite Men were reddening 
the prairie-grasses with each other's blood. 

1812. 

In the midst of these scenes of violence, rapine, and 
carnage, one little ark of promise suddenly upheaved 
on the Bed Biver, — I mean in the formation, now more 
than half a century ago, of the first and still (with ex- 
ceptions too trifling to mention) the only settlement in 
Bupert's Land. 

This was the work of a man whose name has nearly 
sunk in the stream of Time, but will yet re-appear 
in its native strength and lustre. Thomas Earl of 
Selkirk, about forty years of age, in the prime of his 
life, in the noon-tide of his enthusiasm and benevo- 
lence. A Scottish nobleman, descended from the doughty 
Douglases of old, with much of the liard strong Avill 
of the old barons, but more of the liberal ideas and 
practical reforms of the modern statesman, bent upon 
spreading civilization, and elevating the masses of man- 
kind above want and misery. For the present I can 

c2 



20 THE Hudson's bay company. 

only bow to his shade as it passes, and recognize in him 
the same majestic lineaments which mark his brother- 
heroes, the Smiths of Virginia, the Penns of Pennsyl- 
vania, the Baltimores of Maryland, who laid the fomid- 
ation-stones of American greatness and progress. He 
was less fortmiate than they, in the obscurity of his 
early theatre, the seeming failm^e of all his efforts, and 
in altogether wanting a " sacred poet" to commemorate 
his fame. By him was the first Eed Eiver Settlement 
founded ; by him was that settlement guarded for many 
years with paternal fondness and anxiety ; by him was 
it cherished as the sign of a new era, as the little root 
that would swell and spread, and become part of some 
future new empire of humanity. From some passages 
in his little work on " The British Fur Trade in North 
America," we infer that the Hudson's Bay Company at 
that time were well disposed and prepared to carry out 
a system of such settlements in their territory. Gazing 
at the infant settlement in 1816, with a father's pride, 
yet with a father's disappointment, and turning for 
relief, as all noble minds must, to the hopes of the 
future, he exclaims with prophetic glow : '* It is 
a very moderate calculation to say^ that if these regions 
icere occupied hy an industrious population^ they might 
afford ample means of subsistence to more than thirty 
millions of British subjects f 

1821. 

The North- West Company meanwhile had abated 
none of their hostility against the Hudson's Bay, and 
amongst other attempts took Opinions from time to time 
of all distinguished counsel, to see whether they could 
not attack and overthrow the Charter. Edward Ellice, 
the (Joryplia-.us of the North-west, before he carried 



THE HISTORY. 21 

the weight of his abilities and hifluence hito the service 
of the Hudson's Bay^ admitted long afterwards, before 
the Select Committee of 1857, (to which I shall pre- 
sently have occasion to allude,) that all those Opinions, 
though taken at the instance of the North-A¥est Com- 
pany, agreed more or less strongly, that the Hudson's 
Bay Charter was a good conveyance of the freehold; 
though many cast doubt upon the exclusive trade and 
government. The North- West Company, with all their 
money and all their animosity, never dared to raise in 
any tribunal the question of the validity of the Hudson's 
Bay Charter. 

After long-continued, bitter and sanguinary conflicts, 
the two Companies, having exhausted each other's ex- 
chequer, became sobered by poverty, and like the modem 
Railway companies, thought of uniting when their quar- 
rels had reduced them both nearly to beggary. They 
amalgamated in 1821, under the name of the Hudson's 
Bay Company, and under the wing of the Charter. 
The British Government, as a dowry to the impoverish- 
ed couple, presented them with a license of exclusive 
trade over the whole Indian territory west of Eupert's 
Land, over the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific, in- 
cluding what has since been constituted into the colony 
of British Columbia. This license was terminable in 
21 years, but in 1838 was renewed, again terminable 
in 21 years, or in the year 1859. 

The only occupation that the Canadians can pretend 
in Rupert's Land from 1783 was the occupation, such 
as it was, of the parties forming the North- AVest Com- 
pany, by themselves, their hunters, traders, and ser- 
vants. No other class of the Canadian people went 
into these remote and almost inaccessible i*egions. The 
rest of the Canadians — good, plain, slow, sturdy felloAvs 



22 THE Hudson's bay company. 

— were plougliing and digging away on the St. Law- 
rence and Lake Erie, or bringing down lumber by St. 
Anne's. There was no Canadian occupation, except 
through the North- West Company. The benefit of 
that occupation therefore, whatever was the value of it, 
was brought, on the amalgamation of 1821, in aid of 
the Hudson's Bay Charter. Whether it was mere 
poaching, as I assert, or whether it had any legal effect, 
this use and occupation of Eupert's Land from 1783, 
passed, on the amalgamation of 1821, to the account of 
the Hudson's Bay Company and their Charter. And 
it cannot be pretended that since then, that is for the 
last 45 years, Canada has enjoyed or kept up any 
kind or shadow of occupation of Rupert's Land. The 
whole recent, authentic, verifiable possession that can 
count for any thing in law, has been by the Hudson's 
Bay Company. All the rest is old wives gossip — ante- 
diluvian stuff, an amusement for antiquarians, but 
despised by the practical lawyer. I shall have occasion 
to substantiate, from their own lips, that this much- 
paraded claim of Canadian right to Rupert's Land was 
a mere nightmare dream that came into their heads 
ahout the year 1857. 

1848-9. 

The Company, freed from all rivalry, Canada and the 
United States still far off, the natives bowing to them 
as a ]\Ianitou, the settlers few, and all their own subjects, 
went on swimmingly for many years, almost reviving 
the old dividends. 

About 1848 the Imperial Government began to feel 
some anxiety about Vancouver's Island, lest it might 
fall a prey to the " annexing " Yankees ; and as the 
best measure for its preservation and development, 



THE HISTORY. 23 

resolved to place it under the management of the Hud- 
son's Bay Company. This was accordingly done in 1849. 
A license of exclusive trade and management was 
granted for 10 years, terminable therefore in 1859 (the 
time of expiration of the similar license over the Indian 
Territory). 

This was the palmy time of the Hudson's Bay Com- 
pany. Its possessions and powers were then at their 
zenith. They held Eupert's Land by the Eoyal Charter, 
which was perpetual. They held the whole Indian 
Territory to the Pacific by an exclusive license, which 
was terminable in 1859. They held Vancouver's Island 
by a similar license, also terminable in 1859. Three 
different possessions by three different titles. The Com- 
pany is believed at this time to have had under its sole 
sway about 4,000,000 square miles —a dominion larger 
than the whole of Europe. 

But at the very time of the license over Vancouver's 
Island being granted. Parliament, in July 1849, had, 
under various influences, passed a resolution requesting 
the Government to '' ascertain the legality of the powers 
in respect to territory, trade, taxation, and government, 
which are, or recently have been, claimed or exercised 
by the Hudson's Bay Company, on the continent of 
North America, under the Charter." At this time the 
inhabitants of Red River, who professed to have, and 
probably had, many causes of complaint against the 
Company, appeared publicly against them, in the persons 
of Mr. Isbister and Mr. M'Loughlin, natives or residents 
of the Red River. The Colonial Minister, Earl Grey, 
as the Government did in 1784, submitted the question 
to the attorney and solicitor-general. Sir John Jervis 
and Sir John Romilly ; and these learned gentlemen, offi- 
cially at the head of their profession, and undoubtedly 



24 THE Hudson's bay company. 

able lawyers, and under the most serious responsibility to 
Parliament and to the Government, returned the follow- 
ing Opinion. 

"Having regard to the powers in respect of territory, trade, taxation, 
and government claimed by the Hudson's Bay Company in the statements 
furnished to your Lordship by the Chairman of tliat Company, we are of 
opinion that the rights so claimed hy the Company do properly belong to 
them. Upon this subject we entertain no doi(.ht." 

The learned gentlemen then added — 

" But as it will be more satisfactory to the complainants against the 
Company, to the promotors of the discussion in the House of Commons, 
and possibly to the Company themselves, if the questions are publicly 
urged and solemnly decided, we humbly advise your Lordship to refer 
these questions to a competent tribunal for consideration and decision, and 
to inform Mr. Isbister that he may appear as complainant, and the Com- 
pany that they may be heard as respondents upon the argument." 

They then suggest what ought to be the particular 
form of legal proceeding. 

The Government, with the concurrence of the 
Hudson's Bay Company, put it to Mr. Isbister and Mr. 
M'Loughlin, if they would adopt the course pointed out, 
and appear as complainants in such suit, so as to try 
the legality of tlie powers claimed by the Company under 
their Charter. Both these gentlemen refused, and upon a 
ground which I must characterise as disingenuous and 
irrelevant, a ground which was afterwards repeated as a 
cuckoo-song by other parties who in course of time came 
forward to attack the title. The ground was shortly this : 
— that the inhabitants of the Red Eiver, through their 
representatives, were not called upon to raise the action 
against the Charter ; that the duty of doing this devolved 
upon the Imperial Government. It is a very invidious, 
a very rare and extreme measure, for a lord to attack 
the title of his own vassal — to tear up the charter 
which he has granted under his OAvn hand and seal. Still 
a case may be supposed, and indeed has sometimes 
happened, where the lord has so raised action against 
his own vassal's title. But in such a case he has been 



THE HISTORY. 25 

instructed by his responsible advisers, that the title is 
manifestly and flagrantly bad ; and also that his interests 
are prejudiced by it. But in the present instance, the 
Crown was advised, (as it had been in 1748, but this 
time in far more strong and unqualified language), that 
ex facie the Charter was good and indisputable; that the 
Crown had no cause or excuse to impugn it. Under 
such advice the Crown could not take action, without 
the most glaring injustice, partiality and inconsistency. 
It remained then for the objectors to take the initiative; 
and if they refused, the matter was at an end. 

This was the conclusion to which the Government 
came, and which was forcibly and tersely expressed in 
the closing letter of the Colonial Minister. 

'•'• Lord Grey having on behalf of Her Ma- 
jesty's Government, adopted the most effectual means 
open to him for answering the requirements of the 
Address, has been obliged, in the absence of any parties 
prepared to contest the rights claimed by the Company, 
to assume the opinion of the Law- Officers of the Crown 
in their favour to be well-founded." 

But you will naturally inquire — where were the 
Canadians in 1849 ? The Hudson's Bay Charter was 
assailed in the British Parliament ; it was being sub- 
jected to a rigorous investigation by the Britisli Govern- 
ment; and Mr. Isbister and Mr. ]\PLoughlin came 
dragging all tlie way from the Eed Eiver to do their 
best to blow it up. Where were the Canadians ? 
According to their modern pamphleteers, they — about 
three millions of people — had been for two hundred 
years robbed, plundered, abused, and oppressed by the 
handful of Hudson's Bay traders, had been kept out of 
their rights, and barred by some kind of witchcraft from 
entering and taking possession of the whole country to 



26 THE Hudson's bay company. 

tlie Pacific. Here then, in 1849, was the time for fell 
revenge. Earl Grey was holding out the Charter for 
any body to come and tear it to pieces that could. 
Then where were the robbed, plundered, abused Cana- 
dians ? 

It must be confessed that they were fast asleep — in 
a state of dead unconsciousness as to their having any 
rights that had been stolen, any rights to claim or 
recover. In the Committee of 1857 (to which I am 
just about to pass in my narrative) Lord John Russell 
naturally puts this very question to the leading Canadian 
witness. Chief Justice Draper: — 

" Wlien the opinion of Lord Grey was known in Canada (that is in 
1849), was there a disposition to acquiesce in the mode pointed out by 
Lord Grey ?" 

''' T am not moare" — answers Cliief-Justice Draper — "that the matter 
toas in any ivay discussed or considered in Canada at that particular 
period : I do not think it tvas." 

Lord John Russell (somewhat surprised no doubt at 
this naive confession on the part of the deeply injured 
Canadians) : — 

" ITas it been since?'' 

'* I cannot say that it has : I am not ahle to answer the question." 

Another authority, almost equal to Chief-Justice 
Draper, John Ross, member of the Canadian Parliament, 
confirmed this extraordinary case of sleep. 

Mr. Labouchere. — " Save those questions only recently occiqried public 
attention in Canada, or have they been discussed for some time there?" 

Answer. — " I think it was during the very last summer that the discussion 
first commenced upon the subject" — that is the summer of 1856. 

The Canadians, robbed of half a continent since 1670, 
fell fast asleep, like Rip Van Winkle, but drowsier than 
he, slept for 200 years ; then starting up and rubbing 
their eyes, raised an outcry that has echoed all over 
England : '' Where's our Red River gone ? and our 
Western Prairies? Where's our Saskatchewan? and 
who stole the Rocky Mountains ?" 



THE HISTORY. 27 

Uncharitable people will conclude, that a clreadfiil 
robbery, which the victim could sleep over for 200 
years, never had any existence but in his own diseased 
imagination. 

1857—8. 

For seven years the Company seem to have moved 
on unmolested and prosperous, ruling and tradhig over 
their vast dominions. But as the time approached 
(1859), when their licenses over the Indian Territory 
and Vancouver's Island wouhl expire, attention was 
again drawn to their position and claims. The Cana- 
dians — or at least some who assumed to be their leaders 
— were now rubbing up their eyes, and working them- 
selves into a belief that the Company had robbed them 
of their rights for the last two hundred years, and that 
they were entitled to the whole continent. The Impe- 
rial Government was dropping into the conclusion that 
the time had arrived to form Vancouver's Island and 
the Indian Territory into British colonies. Out of this 
ferment of circumstances there again came up an agi- 
tation to inquire into the Hudson's Bay Company — 
which seems to be a periodical mania with a certain 
class of politicians. In February 1857, when ^Ir. 
Labouchere was Colonial Minister, a motion was carried 
in the House of Commons, '* that a Select Committee 
be appointed to consider the state of those British 
Possessions in North America which are under the 
administration of the Hudson's Bay Company, or over 
which they possess a license to trade." 

This was the most searching and unsparing inquiry 
that was ever made into the position of that or any 
other public company. I cannot, with my present 
limited object, and the short time at my command, enter 
into details; but I cannot help recording my conviction 



28 THE HUDSON'^ BAY COMPANY. 

as I pass, that the Company came well out of the ordeal 
— as well as poor hmnan creatm*es and poor hmnan 
institutions can ever come out of any strict and merciless 
examination. 

The meeting of the Select Committee of 1857 was a 
great field-day for the opponents of the Company. It 
was attended by our old acquaintances of 1849 — Mr. 
Isbister and Mr. M'Loughlin, whose hostility time had 
rather embittered than abated. But a much more 
august personage appeared on the scene — Canada, almost 
in propria persona — '' The Honourable William Henry 
Draper, C.B., Chief Justice of the Court of Common 
Pleas of Upper Canada," and who had been commissioned 
by the Government of Upper Canada " to undertake the 
duty of coming to England for the purpose of watching 
the investigation." Not merely however of watching 
the investigation before the Committee, but also of 
bringing the question of the Company's Charter and 
whole rights before some competent tribunal. Being 
asked on the 28tli May, 1857, "Do you believe that the 
province of Canada would be disposed themselves to 
raise the question of the validity of the Charter of the 
Hudson's Bay Company, either in whole or in part, 
before either the Judical Committee of the Privy Coun- 
cil^ or some other tribunal ? " he answers, '' I can best 
answer that question by stating that I have express in- 
structions and authority to retain counsel to represent the 
province, whenever in my judgment it is necessary." He 
adds, "If her Majesty's Government were broadly to say 
that Canada must appear before the Judical Committee 
of the Privy Council for the purpose of determining 
her boundaries, I apprehend that my instructions go the 
full length of enabling me to do so." 

Now then the battle closes in earnest, and must be 



THE HISTORY. 29 

sliarply decided. No more skirmishing, but a stand-up 
fight between Canada and Hudson's Bay for tlie title to 
the North- West ! 

The Government, anxious that this vexed territorial 
question should be determined, but equally anxious, as 
every British Government of whatever party is, and ever 
will be, till our national character is debased, and our 
constitution subverted, that legality shall be paramount 
over every other consideration,— the Government, I say, 
again referred the matter, in June 1857, as the Govern- 
ments of 1748 and 1849 had done, to the responsible 
law-officers of the Crown. 

The attorney and solicitor-general at this time were 
Richard Bethell, now Lord Westburv, and Henry, now 
Judge Keating. I think there is no man in this meeting, 
or in this country, who has any intelligence in public 
affairs, any knowledge of the status of public men, but 
will agree that this age has not seen a greater jurist, a 
surer legal guide, than Richard Bethell. With a mind 
of rare combination, as acute as profound, with severe 
early training, and a comprehensive knowledge of all 
jurisprudence, with a largeness and equipoise of powers 
that always made him strike the true medium, with that 
innate wisdom which enabled him almost unerringly to 
prophesy legal results, the Opinion of Richard Bethell 
is the nearest thing we can have in weight and 
authority to an ultimate judgment of the House of 
Lords, or of the Privy Council. In this instance he 
was delivering his opinion, not as an ex-parte advocate, 
but as a responsible officer of the Crown, sworn to 
advise truly, for the guidance of the Government, 
on a matter raised by the House of Commons, and 
on which the brightest luminaries of the law for a 
lumdrcd years had spoken. He was called upon to 
advise, with all sources of information now thoroughly 



30 THE Hudson's bay company. 

ransacked, with the American colonies on the watch, and 
the eyes of the jurists and politicians of both sides of the 
Atlantic upon him. 

I cannot pass cursorily over such an Opinion from 
such a man; I must give it nearly at full length. 
Anxious as I am to save time, I must claim some 
indulgence at this point; our Avhole case lies here; this 
is the highest authority on our title ; and on our title 
our whole future policy depends. 

Without making any preliminary cpiotations, the fol- 
lowing then is the true substance of the Opinion : — 

" The questtons of the validity and construction of the Hudson s Baif 
Company s Charter cannot he considered apart from the enjoyment that has 
been had under it during nearly two centuries, and the recognition made of 
the rights of the Company in various acts both of the Government and the 
Legislature. 

"Nothing could be more unjust, or more op^DOsed to tlie spirit of our 
law, than to try this Charter as a thing of yesterday, upon principles 
which might be deemed applicable to it if it had been granted within the 
last ten or twenty years. 

" These observations however must be considered as limited in their 
application to the territorial rights of the Company, under the Charter, 
and to the necessary incidents or consequences of the territorial ownership. 
Tliey do not extend to the monopoly of trade (save as territorial owner- 
ship justifies the exclusion of intruders), or to the right of an exclusive 
administration of justice." 

" In our opinion the Croion could not now with justice raise the question 
of the general validity of the Charter ; but . . . on every legal principle 
the Company s territorial otvnership of the lands granted, and the rights 
Tiecessarily incidental thereto (as, for example, the_ right of excluding from 
their territory persons acting in violation of their regulations), ought to 
be deemed to he valid. 

"But with respect to any rights of government, taxation, exclusive ad- 
ministration of justice, or exclusive trade, otherwise than as a consequence 
of the right of ownership of the land, such rights could not be legally insisted 
on by the Hudson s Bay Company as having been legally granted to them 

bif the Crown." 
•^ ***** * 

" The Company has, under the Charter, power to make ordinances (whicli 
would be in the nature of bye-laws) for the government of the persons em- 
ployed by thorn, and also power to exercise jurisdiction in all matters 
civil and criminal ; but no ordinance would be valid that was contrary to 
the common law, nor could the Company insist on its right to administer 
justice as against the Crown's prerogative right to establish Courts of 
civil and criminal justice within the territory. 

# * * * * * . 

"The remaining subject of consideration is the question of the geogra- 
phical extent of the territory granted by the Charter, and whether its 



THE HISTORY. 31 

boundaries can in any and what manner be ascertained. In the case of 
grants of conslderahle age, such as this Chartet\iohen the ivords, «><? is often 
the case, are indefinite or ambiguous, the rule is, that they are construed hy 
usage and enjoyment. 

* * * * * * 

" Under these circumstances we cannot but feel that the important ques- 
tion of the boundaries of the territory of the Hudson's Bay Company 
mif^ht with great utility, as between the Company and Canada, be made 
the subject of a quasi-judicial inquiry." 

And then Counsel suggest, that the inquny might be 
conducted of consent before the Privy Council. 

Opinion can be carried no further. You may consult 
for a hundred years, and throw away ten thousand 
guineas, but higher or more authoritative than this, 
there can be none. Short of a final judgment — which 
no opponent will venture to demand — the Opinion 
which I have read is the best and most undoubted ex- 
position of law on the Hudson's Bay title. 
It amounts to this : - - 

a. That our title must be construed by possession and 
usage, and public acts of recognition. 

h. That our title is indisputable to the lands or terri- 
tory, and all rights incident to ownership. 

c. But does not cover exclusive trade, or exclusive 
jurisdiction, except so far as these may be incidents of 
ownership, and of lawful ordinances made by the Com- 
pany as owners. 

d. It follows that the Crown has no right, cause or 
pretext to initiate any proceedings for trying the validity 
of the Company's Charter, but must hold and treat it 
as good and valid. 

e. But there are obscure points of boundary between 
Canada and Rupert's Land, which might with propriety 
be tried or submitted before some competent tribunal. 

On receiving this Opinion, the Government inquired 
of the Hudson's Bay Company if they would agree to 
go before the Privy Council, on the question of the 



32 THE Hudson's bay company. 

disputed boundaries. They readily consented. The 
correspondence with the Canadian Government is not 
published, so far as I know, but it is evident from the 
result that they refused to take any action — would 
neither concur in a trial of the boundaries, nor raise 
proceedings to try tlie validity of the Charter. And so 
the Honourable William Henry Draper, C. B., Chief 
Justice and Commissioner of Canada, disappears from 
the stage — as lamely and impotently as Messrs. Isbister 
andM'Loughlin had done before. 

1858—59. 

The Canadians seem for a while to have remained 
dormant and uncertain how to act; but in August 1858, 
when the trading licenses were about to expire. Sir Bulwer 
Ijytton being Colonial Minister, the Legislative Council 
and Assembly, in short the Parliament of Canada, sent 
over an address to the Queen, setting forth that there 
was then '^ a favourable opportunity for obtaining a final 
decision on the validity of the Charter of the Company, 
and the boundary of Canada on the north and west." 

They then represent, '^ That Canada should 

not he called upon to compensate the said Company for 
any portion of such territory from which they may 
withdraw, or be compelled to withdraw ; but that the 
said Company should be allowed to retain and dispose 
of any portion of the lands thereof on which tliey 
have built or improved." This last is a very candid, if 
neither a very honest nor dignified confession. The 
Canadians don't want to pay. They remind me of the 
Irish fellow I met in a boat on the Dublin Canal, who 
said — "I like whiskey, but I don't like to pay for it." 
The Canadians like Rupert's l^and, but they don't like 
to pay for it. 



THE HISTORY. 33 

Sir Bulwer Lytton, who showed himself, if not a par- 
tisan, at least animated by a kind of sportman's keenness, 
proposed to the Company to join in setting up their 
Charter as a target to be fired at. Mr. Berens, then 
Deputy-Governor, returned this memorable answer : 

" The Company cannot he an assenting party 

to any proceeding lohicli is to call in question rights so 
long established and recognized ; but they will of course 
be prepared to protect themselves against any attempt 
that may be made on the part of the Canadian autho- 
rities to deprive them, without compensation, of any 
portion of the territory they have so long been in 
possession of." 

Sir Bulwer, after rhetorically scolding Mr. Berens 
for his obduracy, felt that after all a Colonial Minister 
must restrain his fancy, and be guided by the dry legal 
opinion of his attorney and solicitor-general, then Sir 
Fitzroy Kelly and Sir Hugh Cairns. Again a fom^th 
recorded time (besides possibly many unrecorded oc- 
casions,) was the question of the Hudson's Bay Charter 
referred to the law officers of the Crown. Their Opinion 
has not been published ; but obviously it was the same 
as those of their numerous predecessors; for they 
advised the Crown not to interfere, and that the only 
way of trying the question was for the Canadian 
Government to raise a writ of scire facias for the repeal 
of the Charter. 

Armed with this Opinion, Sir Bulwer turned briskly 
to the Canadians, hoping that he would find in them 
more sympathising natures than in obdurate Mr. Berens. 
'^ Procure the writ!" he cries to them chivalrously, in his 
dispatch of 22nd December, 1858. But when the Cana- 
dians, who like Paddy didn't want to pay, found that 
the then law-officers of the Crown just repeated the 

D 



34 THE Hudson's bay company. 

same advice as their numerous predecessors, found tliat 
the opponents of the Charter must try the Charter 
out of their own pockets, they began quietly to back 
out, and requested to have some time for consideration. 
Sir Bulwer could not conceal his disappointment, as 
the chance of the shooting match began to vanish. He 
wrote to the Canadian Government, in February 1859, 
with something like reproach, that their deputation had 
assured him that the Canadian Government were imme- 
diately to institute law proceedings against the Hudson's 
Bay, and he must at once know their decision. After 
brooding away for another month, the Canadian Par- 
liament through Sir Edmund Head, their Governor, an- 
nounced on the 4th of April, 1859, their final resolution. 

"I am now for the first time able to inform you, tliat tlie Executive 
Council will not advise steps to be taken for testing the validity of the 
Charter by scire facias." 

This was the unkindest cut of all. The Canadians, 
after exciting his expectations by a good deal of pre- 
liminary bluster^ to flmg aside their muskets, and not a 
shot to be fired at the old Charter ! Sir Bulwer, so far 
as appears in the Papers, deigned no reply ; and must 
have sought relief from the commonplace shabbiness 
of mankind in the fancies which afterwards fed his 
'' Strange Story." 

The Canadians had now for the second time a clear 
stage and fair opportunity, with the Colonial Minister 
apparently favourable to them, to try the Charter. Yet 
by an act of their Legislature, communicated through 
their Governor to the British Crown, they positively 
and solemnly refused. After this formal act of their 
Government, it became impossible for them any longer 
to maintain the attitude of legal objection to the Charter. 
They could not do this with the smallest self-respect or 



THE HISTORY. 35^ 

consistency ; all political parties in this countiy would 
laugh at their folly, if they should continue to maintain 
objections in law, which they had not the courage or 
honesty to try, when they were challenged and almost 
baited into the contest. 

Since that time therefore the Canadian Government 
have practically abandoned the question as a legal 
question, whatever private individuals and pamphleteers 
may do. They have now publicly proclaimed it to be a 
diplomatic, or political question, one to be resolved, not 
on naked principles of law, but on the mixed and 
equitable rules of policy. 

This appears fully recorded in Mr. CardwelFs dispatch 
of 17th June 1865, relating to the proposed North- 
American Confederation. Eeferring to conferences he 
had then recently held with a deputation from the 
Canadian Government, he says, — 

" On the ... . subject of the North- Western Territory, the Canadian 
Ministers desired that that Territory should be made over to Canada, and 
undertook to negotiate with the Sudsons Bay Company for the termination 
of their rights, on condition that the indemnity, if any, should be paid by 
a loan, tobe raised by Canada under the Imperial guarantee." 

, On this unimpeachable authority then it is demon- 
strated that the Canadian Government no longer treat 
tJie question as one of laio^ hut one of apolitical negotiation 
— that is, of rational and equitable arrangement. 

No doubt, even when they abandon their legal ob- 
jections, the old virus betrays itself in the phrase — ^^ the 
indemnity, if any T Thus insinuating that no indemnity 
may be due — that the Company have no rights. 'Tis a 
petty inuendo, —miserably petty for a body of men 
pretending to be a Government, and to be statesmen, 
and putting on airs as the foimders of a new American 
Confederation. But if this attempt to leave the wasp's 
sting behind, even when offering negotiation, be any 

d2 



36 THE Hudson's bay company. 

relief to their irritated pride, baffled so long by the 
astuteness and vigilance of a private corporation, they 
are welcome to the use of any such bitter expression. 
Words will do no harm ; we shall be on our guard 
against acts. 

With this historical narrative before you it will be 
seen, that in 1748 the validity of the Company's Charter 
was directly attacked and tried in the Privy Council, 
and after a full investigation was sustained by the Go- 
vernment ; that from 1783 to 1821 the North-west 
Company of Canada were constantly projecting how to 
annul the Charter on legal objections, but found it was 
useless, and never ventured upon the attempt ; that in 
1848-9 the representatives of the Eed Eiver malcontents, 
though pressed by the Government, refused to take any 
legal proceedings ; that the Canadian Government have 
twice refused since 1857 to take legal proceedings, and 
the last time in the most solemn public form in which 
they can act as a community ; and that recently, in a 
form scarcely less solemn, they have receded from the 
legal ground altogether, anc' have acknowledged that 
the question is not one of laio^ but oi political negotiation. 

And yet there are shallow pamphleteers and repeaters 
of parrot-phrases who keep crying, '' O your title has 
never been tried, your title has never been tried !" 

Has the Duke of Bedford's? Has the Marquis of 
Westminster's? have any of the most solid titles in 
England ? Do you mean to say that no title is to be 
respected until it has been tried in a court of law ? 
Pleasant news for lawyers certainly, whatever it may be 
for proprietors, — so many estates, so many law-suits! 
Did you ever hear of any proprietor, except for friendly 
or family reasons, mad enough to raise an action against 
his own title ? If you were landlord of a house, and a 



THE HISTORY. 37 

wag passing were to say, '' I don't believe that man has 
any right to the house, he has never tried his title," 
should you immediately rush to your lawyer and com- 
mand him to raise an action against your title, and 
have its validity tried, all to satisfy a passing fool ? Yet 
this, which you at once see in your own affairs would be 
the silliest of jokes to propose, has been gravely pro- 
pounded as an objection against the Hudson's Bay Com- 
pany. Pray why are they, of all proprietors since 
Adam, to be the self-confessed madmen to raise an 
action against their own title ? 

But has the title not been tried, to all intents and 
purposes, as few titles have ever been tried ? and has it 
not always come out clear and triumphant, at least as 
respects the ownership of the land ? I appeal to the 
foregoing narrative, if it has not been tried to the very 
core. Independent of many trials, doubtless, of which 
we have no record, have I not shown that for ^ve re- 
corded thnes it has passed through the fire, with its 
substance uninjured, and only annealed by the strength 
of the flames ? 

But why say more ? why appeal to reason, when it is 
gross interested motives that are arrayed against us, 
deaf to the voice of reason ? The title is so clearly un- 
exceptionable, that we should never have heard a word 
against it, but for rancour, and greed, and political 
ambition as mean and shabby as it is selfish. 

IV. Necessity of New Policy. 
Fifty years ago — nay much less — this Rupert's Land 
was away in the ends of the earth — unknown and 
unapproachable. Its only settlement at the Red 
River — a collection of huts little better than the 
Indian wigwams — was about 1500 miles distant from 
any centre of population, either in Canada or in the 



38 THE Hudson's bay company. 

United States. The country, if destitute of cultivation, 
was also, from its very inaccessibility, safe from aggres- 
sion. 

But within the last 20 years the Far- West of America 
has been filled up with a rapidity almost unexampled. 
A small cluster of log-houses multiply in a few years 
into a city of one or two hundred thousand inhabitants. 
The states and territories adjoining the boundary-line of 
Eupert's Land now contain a population of nearly 
2,000,000. By the Eed Eiver, constant communication 
has been established between St. Paul, the capital of 
Minnesota, and Selkirk ; and the American population 
are gradually moving on and on to Pembina on the very 
frontier. It is the same all along the boundary-line. 
Gold discoveries, the modern loadstone of population, 
are being made near the Vermilion Lake, Minnesota, 
about 80 miles west of Lake Superior, and drawing shoals 
of adventurers. Gold is foimd in Montana near the 
Eocky Mountains, not 300 miles from the head waters 
of the North Saskatchewan, where gold is also known 
to exist. Last summer 40,000 American miners were 
at work in Montana, making sums so incredible that I 
dare hardly repeat the amount until the circumstances 
are more fully vouched; next summer double the number 
are expected. " If the Hudson's Bay Company do not 
wake up," — says a private letter which I have seen from 
an official gentleman in Mnnesota, dated in December, 
1 865 — " I am afraid that there will be danger of their 
losing some of the finest portions of the Valley of the 
Saskatchewan and its tributaries." Population is up to 
our very boundary. Flocks of squatters are passing 
over. That mere imaginary line, which has not even 
the one solitary sentinel who is said to embody the 
whole force of the British empire, will soon be forgotten ; 
and there will be an " ugly rush " all over the Prairies 



NECESSITY OF NEW POLICY. 39 

— a rush which, if we are not prepared beforehand, we 
shall neither be able to control nor regulate. The 
world wants the land, and will have it. Hitherto the 
Americans have acted with great self-restraint, with 
great equity, with great consideration of our rights ; but 
if we are to sit for ever motionless and mysterious like 
the Sphinx, they will soon pass us by with contempt, 
and utilize for themselves our green valleys and hill- 
tops, — and our richly stored mines. 

If once our boundary is over-leaped, and our territories 
inundated, two consequences are likely to ensue : — 

1st. The squatters will take possession right and 
left, without any regard to our Charter, and will refuse 
to pay to a weak private Company either tribute or ac- 
knowledgment. They will submit to nothing, take 
title from notliing, short of some established government, 
be it the United States or Great Britain. 

2nd. This rush of Americans (for it will be Ame- 
ricans chiefly) will soon in some way implicate the 
United States Government, who know better than 
we do the value of the Fertile Belt, and that this is the 
best route to the Pacific. Complications may thus arise, 
are sure to arise, between the United States and our 
own Government. In the midst of these complications 
some panic legislation will be pushed through; the 
weakest will go to the w^all; the Hudson's Bay — a 
helpless victim between two Colossi — will be sacrificed ; 
an arrangement will be patched up in rough haste, to 
avert the evils of a war; and as in the case of Oregon 
in 1846, all our rights and claims, too numerous and 
intricate to be settled off-hand, will be reserved. Re- 
served ! — which means law-suits, or arbitrations, or nego- 
tiations, of which I prophesy the youngest shareholder 
in this room will never see the end. 



40 THE Hudson's bay company. 

If you shareholders do not take up the matter seriously, 
and make up your minds, and decide, and see that your 
decisions are obeyed, — two years more will not pass 
till the whole affair is snatched out of your hands. The 
current of events, too strong for individuals or private 
companies, will sweep past, and, reckless of you and 
your rights, will make Eupert's Land the tool of the 
political necessities of the moment ; and your capital 
of £2,000,000 may go the bottom of Lake Winnipeg ! 
Events have no compassion. He who wants justice 
and safety must command, not wait events. It is not 
silence, and mystery, and platitude, and red-tapeism 
that will save your splendid property ; but clear heads, 
firm steps, and determined wills. 

What must he done ^ 

V. The New Policy. 

We have only two alternatives from which to choose ; 
we must either find a purchaser for the Territory, or we 
must ourselves proceed to settle and colonise it. 

Sell or Settle — which? 

But I have to make a preliminary remark on our 
condition as a corporate body, which may come gi-eatly 
to affect our ultimate resolution on the policy of sale or 
settlement. 

I have already explained, that the grant to the Com- 
pany of ownership of the land is good ; but the grants 
of exclusive trade and exclusive jurisdiction are bad. 
At the same time the Company are entitled, as an inci- 
dent of their ownership, to exclude trespassers from 
their land, and to this extent they might maintain some 
amount of exclusive trade ; and they are entitled, as an 
incident of their ownership, to pass and enforce lawful 
bye-laws and regulations, that is to exercise a certain 



THE NEW POLICY. 41 

degree of jurisdiction, amongst their own servants, 
agents, lessees and grantees, and even over the inha- 
bitants generally, if the Crown do not of its own preroga- 
tive interfere or prohibit. Tlie Charter is good only for 
the ownership of the land, with such rights of trade and 
jurisdiction only as are the incidents of ownership. 
The Charter, in short, carries nothing but the land, and 
the rights inherent in the ownership of the land. Tlie 
shareholders^ then^ are a corporation only for the pur- 
poses of the ownership of the land — to hold, to manage, 
to cultivate, to settle, to lease, to convey, always re- 
serving the radical ownership. So long as we hold, 
or settle, or convey, or manage the land, reserving the 
lordship of the territory, our Charter subsists, we are 
a corporation. The moment we make an out-and-out 
sale or transfer, the moment we part out-and-out with 
the land, loe are a corporation no more^ our Charter is 
put on the back of the fire, and we are simply 1000 or 
2000 (whatever our number be) of isolated, unconnected 
individuals, having no corporate existence. We may 
enter into new articles of association, we may register 
ourselves as a limited company, and thus get new com- 
pany powers for new purposes. But part with Eupert's 
Land, the Charter is evacuated — the Hudson s Bay Com- 
pany instantly dies, 

I wish to impress this upon you ; because there is a 
vague notion current that we may sell and transfer the 
land, yet still retain the incorporating powers, still be 
the Hudson's Bay Company ; turn our corporate powers 
to some new account — work away at our fur and goods 
trade, or go into tea, guano, or petroleum, or at least 
become an investing and money-lending company, all 
under our old Charter. 

This is a complete mistake. Our incorporating 



42 THE Hudson's bay company. 

powers were given, not at random, not to be used any 
way, according to our freaks and fancies, but to be 
applied and restricted to the specific purposes (so far as 
in themselves legal) defined in the grants of the Charter. 
The only legal and valid portion of these grants, ac- 
cording to our best jurists, is the freehold of the land. 
Part with this freehold, our Charter is void. We may 
form a new company, but it cannot be under the 
Charter. The old flag must fly at the old mast-head : 
it cannot be hung over a Broker's shop. 

Now then, to return to the discussion of the two 
alternatives— Sale or Settlement? 

Sale. 

The price to be expected and demanded for the Ter- 
ritory, must be arbitrary ; we have no data for laying 
down a sum certain. 

If I have an estate fully occupied and cultivated, it 
returns a certam annual rental, and that rental multiplied 
by the usual number of years' purchase, gives nearly 
about the sum which ought to be paid by a purchaser. 

Our estate is not fully occupied, scarcely occupied 
at all, nor is it cultivated except to a small extent ; 
but it has been used and is necessary as the area 
and means for carrying on our trade. Ours is a 
case analogous to the manufacturer or trader who, pos- 
sessing certain lands, has not used them so much 
for cultivation, but they have served him and been 
necessary to him in various ways for the purposes and 
operations of his manufacture or trade. A Eailway 
Company comes to dispossess him ; and without his 
property his trade cannot be carried on ; with the loss 
of his property he loses his trade. Such cases of com- 
pensation frequently occur in the present times ; and 



THE NEW POLICY. 43 

the rule of compensation is, that a fair price is allowed 
for the land taken, and the good-will of the trade is 
valued, and full indemnity allowed for the loss. 

Our case is the very same in principle. If our land 
is to be taken, and with it (as we shall immediately see) 
the good-will of our trade, the compensation must be 
made up from mixed data; and these data are composed 
of two elements : — 

A. The prospective value of the estate to the pur- 
chaser ; 

B. The contingent depreciation and loss in our own 
trade. 

A. Value of estate to purchaser. 

Without resorting to general calculations, we have a 
precedent to guide us here m the neighbouring state of 
Minnesota, lying close to us, the prototype of what 
our territory will soon become. 

Minnesota was formed into a territory in 1849. It 
had of cultivated acres in 1850, 5,035, in 1865, 
1,000,000, being an increase at the rate of 19,760 per 
cent, in the course of fifteen years. In 1862 land was 
selling there at £1. 125, but lately was rising to £3 and 
£4 per acre. We shall take as the average price of 
land in Eupert's Land for fifteen years, the one half only 
of Minnesota in 1862, I65 per acre. At present the 
quantity of land under cultivation in Eupert's Land is 
about 20,000 acres. At the rate of increase in Minne- 
sota, it would amomit in fifteen years to 4,000,000. At 
I65 per acre, that would produce £3,200,000. Our 
Australian experience of annual revenue derived from 
sales of public land confirms this estimate, or rather 
proves it to be too low. The quantity and value of land 
then which a purchaser of the territory would sell in the 
first fifteen years, may be safely estimated at £3,200,000. 



44 THE Hudson's bay company. 

There being, as we have seen, 22,000,000 acres of 
immediately available land, there would still remain 
to the pm'chaser 18,000,000 acres at gradually in- 
creasing prices, but even at I6s per acre, worth nearly 
£15,000,000. 

This, independent of all other sources of wealth in 
the territory, such as fisheries, oils and salt, minerals, 
the higher price for town allotments, &c, &c. 

B. Depreciation or loss of trade. 

Our trade is almost solely of two kinds — in Furs ex- 
ported, and Goods imported. 

Our Accounts nowhere show our exact annual revenue 
from trade. 

By the last annual Account made up to the end of 
May 1865, it appears we have two working portions of 
capital : — 

Money in Investments .... £346,601 11 9 
„ in Trade 743,985 7 7 

£1,090,586 19 4 

The return upon these two capitals is not distinguished, 
but the whole return upon Investments and Trade is 
lumped as £93,580. Is 9d. What is the average interest 
upon our Money investments we are not informed, but 
for first-class investments, as ours no doubt are, 4J per 
cent is a fair average interest to assume. Our whole 
annual profits being £93,580 1 9 

Suppose the Money investments 

(£346,601) at 4| per cent, to be 15,597 

Leaving profits on Trade . . . £77,983 1 9 

Say £78,000. 
How much of this is for Furs, and how much for 
Goods, we have no means of knowing; but that is of 



THE NEW POLICY. 45 

no conseqiieiice in our present computation. We shall 
put down our Trade profits at £78,000. 

If the land be once purchased and taken out of our 
power and control, our Charter, as I have pointed out, 
will be at an end, and we shall cease to be a corporation. 
But suppose we enter into a new association to continue 
the prosecution of our trade, then our trade will become, 
when separated from the ownership and control of the 
land, so precarious, so exposed to utter extinction, that 
we could no longer rely upon it as a source of revenue. 

(1) All persons who can speak with authority and 
experience declare, that if the country be thrown open 
to settlement, and an influx of population take place, 
with all sorts of characters, desperadoes as well as 
honest men, the wild and roving as well as the steady 
and industrious, the fur-bearing animals will be hunted 
down, driven out of the territory, and speedily extir- 
pated. So has it been in the Far- West of the United 
States, and would equally be so in the North- West of 
British America. Much evidence to this effect was given 
before the Select Committee in 1857. Edward Ellice 
having stated, on the interrogation of Mr. Labouchere, 
that in his time the supply of peltry had " diminished 
probably one-half, if not two-thirds" — adds, ^^ All the 
countries easily reached have been entirely destroyed. 
The valuable trade of the Hudson's Bay Company is in 
the remote districts^ where, nobody having the power to 
interfere with them, they preserve the animals just as 
you do your hares and pheasants in this country." 
The Committee, with the whole evidence before them, 
reported that, if the territory were thrown completely 
open, one consequence would be — "the probability of 
the indiscriminate destruction of the more valuable fur- 
bearing animals in the course of a few years." One of 



46 THE Hudson's bay company. 

the most recent, candid and emphatic testimonies has 
been borne by the present resident Governor of Eupert's 
Land, Mr. Dallas, who, in writing to the Canadian Go- 
vernment in April, 1862, whilst agreeing as to the 
general benefit of settling the Fertile Belt, thus ex- 
presses his conviction that such a settlement would be 
the doom of the Fur Trade. 

" A cliain of settlements tlirougli these valleys (the Fertile Belt) would 
not only deprive the Company of the above vital resource (supplies of 
food from the buffalo herds), but would indirectly in many other ways 
so interfere with their northern trade as to render it no longer worth 
prosecuting on an extended scale. It would necessarily be diverted into 
various channels, possibly to the public benefit, but the Company could 
no longer exist on its present footing, 

" The above reasons against a partial surrender of our territories may 
not appear sufficiently obvious to parties not conversant with the trade, 
or the country ; but my knowledge of both, based on personal experience, 
and from other sources open to me, points to the conclusion, that partial 
concessions of the districts, which must necessarily be alienated, would 
inevitably lead to the extinction of the Company." 

Our success in the Fur-Trade was owing to our 
having the land entirely to ourselves, with no popula- 
tion near us, with a universal belief prevailing that we 
had the legal monopoly, and our being able to impose 
our own tariff and our own terms on the Indians and 
other hunters. But if we part with all rights of owner- 
ship, in fact cease to be the Hudson's Bay Company, 
our advantage will be lost. The spell of the monopoly 
is already broken; the world knows that the best 
jurists have pronounced it illegal ; and for many years 
we have been unable to enforce it. American and Eed 
Eiver dealers compete with us all over the territory ; 
and the Indians have now hundreds of customers for the 
skins, instead of having only the Company. The great 
restless population of the West is dashing over our 
frontiers; and, as wave succeeds wave, oiu' Fur-Trade 
will be more and more obliterated. 

As a question of indemnity, we are bound, by all the 



THE NEW POLICY. 47 

rules of probability and prudence, to set it down as a 
total loss. 

(2.) Our Goods-trade does not seem at first sight so 
necessarily doomed as our trade in Fur. The very 
population which tends to extinguish the latter, might 
be supposed only to stimulate and increase the former. 

But the Goods-trade hitherto has only been a pendant 
of the Fur-trade, meant to do little more than supply 
the outfit ; and its profits again have been kept up and 
swelled by the actual monopoly, long supposed legal, 
which we have possessed of importing and selling mer- 
chandise, and of conducting all trade in the territory, 
without any rivals. Our Goods-trade was entirely 
barter — an enormous truck system ; and formerly, from 
the ignorance of the Indians, we disposed of our goods at 
twenty times their real value. Now that this charm of 
our exclusive right has been dispelled, traders come up 
from the States and traverse the country, and a number 
of pushing and successful merchants have established 
themselves on the Red River. By a retmii which I 
lately saw of goods imported into Rupert's Land via 
St. Paul, it appeared that the goods belonging to in- 
dependent traders and merchants were nearly equal in 
amount to those sent by the Company. So closely is 
competition grazing our heels, and stamping out the 
excessive profits which alone rendered our Goods-trade 
possible. The trade in such a scattered and thinly 
peopled country is and must long be rather retail than 
wholesale — in short pedlars' business ; and in pedlars' 
business a large public company, with its head-quarters 
in London, and its proprietors very numerous and con- 
stantly fluctuating, never can compete with the zeal, 
promptitude, cheap management, and personal go-a- 
head of private individuals, or small select partnerships. 



48 THE Hudson's bay company. 

at work upon the spot. Indeed, in no simply small 
trading business can a public company be the match 
for individuals or a few working partners. 

If we part with the land, we have as little hope of 
maintaining our Goods' as of maintaining our Fur-trade. 

Here then is the loss of our annual profits of trade, — 
£78,000. And this loss, capitalized at 5 per cent amounts 
to a sum representing a loss of £1,570,000. 

The facts, testimonies, and analogies which I have 
adduced, sufficiently warrant the conclusion that our 
trade will be totally lost — that our annual revenue from 
trade will be spunged out. 

But even if the grounds for this conclusion were less 
cogent than they are, it is our part, our interest, our duty 
as a commercial company, as prudent and sensible men, 
to calculate upon the risk of a total loss, and in the 
terms of any purchase to insist for absolute indemnity — 
ahsolute indemnity. We are not selling with a halter 
about our neck, or a pistol at our head ; we are under 
no dire inevitable necessity. We need not sell unless 
we like. As we shall see presently, we can keep our 
land, we can settle our territory, we can open up and 
ourselves enjoy its riches. If we have energy and judg- 
ment, and are up to the time of day, this will be by far 
the most profitable, as it would be the most dignified 
and manly course. We beg no one to buy ; we court 
nobody's offer. If a purchaser comes, he must come in 
no mean, shabby, higgling spirit; he must meet us 
fairly and liberally, and one condition must be — ahsolute 
indemnity for the loss of ow trade. 

I have now examined the two mixed elements from 
which we are to deduce the price that we ought to 
demand for parting with our territory and territorial 
rights. The first was, the prospective value of the 



THE NEW POLICY. 49 

property to a purchaser in fifteen years' time, which I 

estimate within very low bomids at £3,200,000 

The second was the amount of our loss 

in trade, which I estimate at a total 

loss capitalized of . . 1,570,000 

£4,770,000 

Or say in round numbers, £5,000,000. 

Five Millions —that is about the standard of the 
price on which we ought to insist. 

Some of you may be startled for a moment at the 
sound of such a price ; but I beg of you to recast and 
reflect upon the previous calculations, and you will see 
the price is reached, not by baseless and extrava- 
gant conjectures, but by sober, real^ positive facts. And 
remember^ it is not for small and ordinary profits, for 
an everlasting 4 or 4^ per cent, that you withdraw your 
money from the banks, or from consols, or from your 
own business, and risk it in Joint-stock companies, but 
for great and extraordinary chances, such as has 
now turned up to the Hudson's Bay, if we have the 
sense and vigour to take advantage of it. It is not 
every day that a continent is on sale; there is no 
such other estate in the wide world ; and Five Millions 
are a drop in the bucket, compared with the profits 
and advantages that would in the long run be realised 
by any community or company making the purchase. 

But in fact there would be nothing anomalous or 
unprecedented in winding up the Hudson's Bay at such 
a price. These are almost identically the terms on 
which the Government, in 1833, arranged with the 
East India Company — om- elder brother who has 
gone before us into the land of shades. That Company 
was compensated, was bought out in fact, by a 

E 



50 THE Hudson's bay company. 

guaranteed annuity of 10^ per cent on a nominal 
capital of £0,000,000. 

The price we demand (£5,000,000) invested at 4^ per 
cent would yield £225,000. That is, deducting cost of 
management, &c., nearly 10|- per cent on our paid-up 
capital of £2,000,000 — a capital not merely nominal 
like the East India Company's, but actually paid up. 
This I say was the adjustment with the East India 
Company ; and we, the Hudson's Bay, stand in the 
same category, — the last of those ancient proprietary 
corporations who held or conquered kingdoms for the 
]\Iother Country. We are entitled to the same euthan- 
asia. Our position may not have been so dazzling in 
tiie past, but neither has it been marked with so many 
guilty stains ; and I do not hesitate to affirm that we have 
been guarding and preparing for Britain a fresher, and 
fairer, and nobler inheritance of the future. 

But there is a whisper circulating that One Million 
has been offered for our territory. By whom and when 
it was offered, whether it has been seriously discussed 
by the Government or by om- Directors, and whether it 
is still pending, no one can tell. All is studied mystery. 
But as the birds of the air are carrying the matter, we 
may as well give it a passing notice. 

I have already shown, that if we part with the land, 
our Charter is at an end — our incorporation has no 
further legal existence. But even if we were still to 
endeavour as a Corporation to continue in trade, I have 
likewise shown that our trade cannot subsist on a 
mifficiently remunerative scale, when divided from the 
ownership of the land, when the prestige of our mon- 
opoly is dissipated, and when Yankees and Half-breeds, 
true sons of the soil, are disputing with us inch by inch. 
We should therefore be left eventually without any 



THE NEW POLICY. 51 

annual return from trade. When we sell, we must 
wind up — our old Charter collapses for ever. 

Now what sort of winding up will there be upon 
One M{llio7i for the land ? 

I am no great adept in figures, and our Accounts 
are blamed by every one as being vague, incomplete, 
and inexplicit. But for the present we must take them 
as they are. So far as I can make out from the An- 
nual Account up to the end of May, 1865, our assets, 
or realisable means there collected, are as follows : — 

Sundries, including cash in hand £9,234 

Loans and Investments . . . 346,601 

Accounts due to the Company . 30,746 

Plant valued at 65,164 

Advances in Goods .... 743,984 

1,195,731 11 6 
Deduct debts due by Company . 205,947 9 10 



1 


3 


11 


9 


5 


6 


11 


5 


7 


7 



Total assets £989,748 7 8 

Add alleged offer for land . 1,000,000 



Divisible fund £1,989,748 7 8 



But with expenses of management, winding up, con- 
tingent depreciations, &c., we take the divisible fund 
at £1,900,000. This falls far short of our paid-up 
capital (£2,000,000), and therefore we wind up on a 
deficit. It would divide some £18 or £19 per share of 
£20, which, with three years of dividend at 4|^ per 
cent, would be all the harvest gathered by the later 
Hudson's Bay Shareholders for their paid-up capital 
of £2,000,000. 

But test the Million anotlier way. 

Suppose, instead of our dividing and winding up, the 
Million were carried and added to assets, for the purpose 

E 2 



52 THE Hudson's bay company. 

of still keeping up the Company in some shape or other. 
This would make the whole assets about £1,900,000. It 
has been sufficiently shown that the Company could no 
longer be a trading Company ; that with the loss of the 
land the powers of the Charter would be exhausted ; and 
therefore it could only continue for a time (not under 
the Charter at all, but probably under some articles of 
association,) as a money-lending or investing Company. 
Suppose it could invest its whole assets at an average 
of 4| per cent, but deducting average losses and declines, 
and the necessity of keeping back some reserve, the 
annual dividend could never exceed 3 or 3^ per cent. 
Then the new association (for it would no longer be the 
Hudson's Bay Company) would have no great future, 
no boundless resources before it, to incite and tempt 
speculation in its shares. It would be a worn-out 
stump. Judging from similar effete stocks, the shares 
would hang dull and inanimate about £12, and even at 
that price would only be 5 per cent on the capital. In 
fact they would be unsaleable, till in disgust and des- 
peration the still remaining shareholders would wind 
up at whatever disadvantage. 

And yet we hear of men wise after this world who go 
about vaunting, that if we sell our land, Charter and 
everything, for a million, our shares will fly up to £20. 
or £25. — our skin and bone, without horns or tallow, 
will sell above par, Well, one has seen so many ma- 
nias on the Stock Exchange — there is so little calcula- 
tion or common sense in these so-called " operations/' 
so much of monkey imitation — that no one can tell what 
may happen, the mere scream of the Hudson's Bay 
people getting a million of money might send up the 
shares by a sudden bound to £20. or £25. But I as 
certainly believe — and more experienced men as cer- 



THE SETTLEMENT. 53 

tainly believe — that tlie sudden-bounding purchasers 
would find themselves in a short time with only £12. 
in their pockets for every £20. or £25. that they had 
foolishly flung away per share. 

In a word, One Million still leaves a deficit^ and you 
will never make true par out of that. 

Settlement. 

We come to the other alternative which we may 
adopt — that of the Company imder taking the colonisa- 
tion or settlement of their own Territory. 

I am strongly persuaded, under all the circumstances 
in which we are placed, this is our wisest and most 
beneficial course. 

We cannot force purchasers to come forward, or it 
may be long before we can realize an adequate price. 
Are we to stand with our hands in our pockets and do 
nothing ? If nothing be done, circumstances may any 
day break out which will precipitate the interference of 
Government, perhaps both of the British and the United 
States Governments, and our proprietary interests may 
be overriden or postponed. Instead then of waiting idly 
for a purchaser, or a satisfactory price, or running the 
risk of hasty and hurtful interference by governments, 
we ought immediately to make om- right of ownership 
effectual ; we ought to sm^vey and prepare the land for 
settlement ; we ought to set on foot the necessary land 
agencies; we ought to take sufficient precautions, under 
our proprietary rights, for the order and government of 
the population ; and there can be no doubt that within a 
year's time there would be a large immigration into the 
Territory, and extensive tracts of country Avould be 
bought, occupied, and cultivated. Om' title would 



54 THE HUD80N'« bay COMPANY. 

every clay become more and more a substantial reality, 
instead of the shadow it now looks. Our capital in the 
land, now locked up and altogether unproductive, would 
speedily return the most ample interest, and abundantly 
make up for any decline in our trade. Our proprietary 
rights would be so widely diffused and so firaily planted 
that when Government at length came to deal with the 
administration and permanent regulation of the Territory, 
they must first of all recognise and arrange with these 
rights — in short, fairly huy us up — and could not push 
them aside, or postpone them for a time indefinite, as 
could easily be done, and would certainly be done, if we 
remain totally inactive. 

Another advantage in our undertaking the settlement 
of our own lands would be, that without any arbitrary 
or noxious interference, we might have it greatly in 
our power so to conduct and regulate the course of 
settlement, that we could for a while at least protect 
and preserve our trade both in furs and in goods ^ 
until the time gradually arrives when these, almost 
our sole resources at present, may be safely given 
up, and we can rely for revenue upon the proceeds 
of our land settlements. Any Government or in- 
dependent company purchasing and settling the lands, 
would only study their own views and interests, 
and would neither be bound nor disposed to give any 
facility or privilege to our trading operations, if we 
should attempt to linger upon the scene under some new^ 
form; for I must always repeat that, after sale and transfer 
of the land, we are the Hudson's Bay Company no longer. 
It is certain, were the land once out of our hands, we 
should be regarded only as an incubus by the new comers, 
to be shaken off by them as fast as possible, and with 
very little ceremony or mercy. We know what be- 



THE SETTLEMENT. 55 

comes of mouarelis avIio lay down their crowns. Present 
ruling' powxr, alas ! is what the world alone respects. 

By immediately taking the settlement of the land into 
our own hands, we are both able in the meantime to 
guard and preserve our property, to wait without anxiety 
or alarm until adequate terms of purchase can be ad- 
justed, to save and carry on om* trade for some time 
longer, to derive a larger profit from that portion of our 
capital which has lain neglected and unproductive — the 
Land — than we have ever yet realised frcmi trade, and 
to continue the title of the Hudson's Bay Company till 
we can pass it w^ith honour into the hands of the British 
Government, draw our robes around us, and die in a 
manner worthy of the last of our race — the grand old 
Governing Companies of Britain. 

But a plan of colonisation involves two distinct pro- 
cesses, — not only the allotment, sale and management 
of the land, — but the proper and efficient government 
of the Territory. 

I have more than once pointed out that, in the opinion 
of our ablest jurists, we have no right of exclusive go- 
vernment, beyond the powers of regulation inherent in 
the proprietorship of the soil : that the Crown could not 
legally by charter, without the sanction of Parliament, 
delegate and give away the public authority. And even 
if we had the full power of government under the 
Charter, it would be anomalous, inconvenient and dan- 
gerous for a private Corporation long to exercise such 
power ; it would be impossible to retain it, when the 
population becomes very numerous and strong ; it would 
perish in a frightful anarchy, and perhaps give a pre- 
text for a foreign Government, in short for the neighbour- 
ing United States, to interpose, and ultimately seize the 
government for itself. 



56 THE HUDSON'^ BAY COMPANY. 

We ought therefore to put ourselves right from the 
beginning, and, whilst devising and maturing our plans 
of land-settlement, we ought at once to invite and urge 
and co-operate with our own Government, with the 
view of transforming Eupert's Land, in the hrst instance 
at least, into a Croim Colony — the beginning of the 
" New Britain" of the West. 

If there were time I could easily establish, that Eu- 
pert's Land — looking at its extent, resources and fine 
central position— ought first of all to be reared and 
developed as a separate territory, a separate colony, in 
direct connection with the ]\Iother Country. The pre- 
tensions of Canada to make a cabbage-garden of it 
are preposterous. Canada — which is not the eighth of 
the size — which is a thousand miles distant — which is 
its inferior in future capabilities — which has two-thirds 
of its own cultivable land lying still uncultivated — 
which is itself a struggling, undeveloped country — 
not equal in any respect to a fourth-rate kingdom in 
Europe such as Belgium, or many of the single American 
States such as Pennsylvania and Ohio — which has 
burden enough in its own proposed Atlantic Confedera- 
tion—which would dwarf Eupert's Land from a British 
colony into the mere sub-colony of a colony — which has 
no star on its forehead marking it out as the future 
sovereign of British North America — and which is so 
full of provincial politics, and feuds with America, that 
this new Territory, if yoked to Canada, would from the 
very first be placed in a false position Avith the United 
States, which is its natural ally, its nearest market, its 
best means of communication with Europe. — Eupert's 
Land ought to be allowed to grow up and develop 
itself freely as a true independent British Colony. 

If, on the other hand, our Government for any reason, 



THE SETTLEMENT. 57 

do not see that the time has come to make a colony of 
the territory, and if they leave us to ourselves, we have 
admittedly the right as proprietors to exercise very large 
governing powers ; and during the transition period 
we could have little difficulty, with our forts and estab- 
lishments, and with the hardiest and most skilful and 
self-reliant staff of factors and agents that the world 
ever saw, to mamtain order, peace and regularity amongst 
the first hive of population. We must not start at 
straws, and hum and haw, but act like men who, by 
God's providence, have a Continent grown up on their 
hands. 

Having mooted the general outline of a settlement 
of the land, I forbear at present entering into details. 
These as yet could only be crude and premature : they 
must be elaborated by future thought, wisdom and expe- 
rience. After half a century of Emigration and Coloni- 
sation, there would not be the smallest difficulty either 
in laying down or carrying out an intelligent, practical, 
and beneficial scheme for the settlement of Eupert's 
Land. By a simple and just re-distribution of the 
surplus funds of the Company, which are rotting at 
present in stagnant loans and stocks, the necessary 
capital could easily be provided, without going into the 
money-market, or calling in the services of such an 
expensive wet-nurse as Llrs. International-Financial is 
understood to have been. 

It would be out of place for me to do more than 
suggest and advocate the project. I leave it in the mean 
time as good seed to fructify in the minds of the Share- 
holders, till they proclaim with one united voice, which 
no officialism can resist — '' Go to — let the Fertile Belt 
be peopled !" 



05 THE HUDSON S BAY COMPANY. 

I have now finished my task. I liave described the 
Territory^ and have shown that, besides all its mineral 
and industrial resources, it possesses 22,000,000 acres 
of the most fertile land, immediately available for 
cultivation, a favourable and salubrious climate, not- 
withstanding its northern situation, a position midway 
between Europe and the East, and every facility for 
water and railway communication. I have explained 
the Title^ and shown that it confers a perfect and un- 
doubted right to the land of the Territory, and all the 
incidents of ownership. I have sketched so much of 
the History as illustrates, that the Hudson's Bay at one 
time was inclined to foster colonization, and that the 
title of the Company has been corroborated both by 
the defeats of its antagonists, and their repeated refusals 
to try the validity of the title, and by the formal 
recognition of successive Ministries. I have noticed 
the circumstances necessitating a new policy, and 
pointed out the extreme peril of longer inaction — the 
peril from lawless squatters — the peril from political 
complications,— and that if we do not set our house in 
order, two years cannot pass without its either being 
torn from us violently, or taken out of our hands with 
some appearance of law it may be, but all our rights left 
floating about in the air, for an indefinite time— it may 
be for ever. I have considered our new jwlicy^ whether 
it should be sale or settlement ; and calculated, if it be 
sale, that the standard of price should be taken about 
^Ye millions ; but have come to the assured conviction, 
that our most profitable, easy and dignified course would 
be, to carry out as a Company (in the very words of 
the original Prospectus) "a liberal and systematic scheme 
of land settlement." 



CONCLUSION. 59 

Tn this case, as in so many others — in all others if we 
could rightly comprehend them — the private interest 
and the public interest would exactly coincide. 

For our own private interest — we should be able to 
preserve for a certain time, and gradually and safely 
to withdi-aw from, our trading operations. We should 
derive from the sale of the land, and perhaps our own 
cultivation of it to some extent, an amount of profits 
far exceeding what can ever now be derived from our 
tottering and decaying Fur-Trade. We should not creep 
ignominiously out of existence, but hold up our heads 
to the last as England's oldest governing corporation, 
and in a ripe old age wind up our affairs in prosperity 
and renown. 

In the public interest — the present unpeopled and 
uncultured territory would be filled with inhabitants, 
and covered with plenty, and fitted to be a British 
colony, by our labours and investments, without any 
burden to the Imperial Treasury. Our own factors and 
agents, the sons of the soil, inured to the clime, bred to 
hardihood, having the key to the habits and feelings of 
the natives, would be the pioneers of civilization, the 
breakers-up of the wilderness, the best managers and 
peace-makers amongst a wild and difficult population. 
Our forts, factories and missions, diffused through the 
whole territory, would be everywhere the centres from 
which the lights of industry, knowledge and order 
would shine forth into what yere formerly the dark 
places of the earth. To open up and connect the various 
settlements, we should have to make or improve the 
means of transit along the rivers and lakes, and across 
the softly undulating prairies, and thus be marking out 
the line of the most stupendous railway in the world — 
tit work for a great empire — which shall erelong 



60 THE Hudson's bay company. 

stretch its iron chain between the waves of the AtLantic 
and Pacific. At last New Britain would begin to 
show itself in rising might and majesty over the North- 
West of America — not the enemy I hope of the kindred 
Eepublic — not to engage in mniatnral strife and fra- 
tricidal wars, but emulous only in the arts of peace, and 
in the development of humanity. It were well for the 
balance of America, well for the good of mankind, that 
British ideas and institutions should flourish in the 
Fertile Belt. Men live and grow best under a variety 
of influences. No Continent can be healthy that is 
pressed down by one sole and huge Leviathan. We 
are standing on the mount of vision, and can only dimly 
descry the new and higher forms of life, thought and 
social brotherhood, which may yet arise on the now 
silent banks of the Saskatchewan, amid the now waste- 
lying prairies that spread on and on to the sublime 
peaks of the Eocky Mountains. Hope sheds its blessed 
rays on the horizon of the Future. Amidst all the dis- 
appointments, amidst all the disenchantments to which 
we are exposed, the human soul clings instinctively to 
the belief — 

•' That Earth has something yet to show ! " 

The world is not exhausted. Civilization is only daTMi- 
ing*, it has only gilded the tops and upper cornices of so- 
ciety * it has scarcely touched the body of the building; 
the base is lying in utter darkness. This new Conti- 
nent in the North- Westi— boundless, fertile, unoccujDied, 
comparatively near, and still within the domain of Bri- 
tain—holds out new and nobler prospects to om- indus- 
trious classes, to our landless men who long for some 
root in the soil, and to struggling talent, merit, and 
ambition, which can find no suflicient theatre at home. 



61 



STATEMENT. 



A number of the Shareholders of the Hudson's Bay 
Compau}^, knowing- that a g'ood deal of dissatisfaction 
and anxiety had long- prevailed amongst the general 
body on the uncertain state of their affairs, resolved that 
an opportunity should be afforded to the Shareholders to 
hold a meeting- and conference on the subject. Having- 
learned that one of their fellow-Shareholders, Mr. Dodds, 
had been led to pay particular attention to the history 
and condition of the Compan}^^ they arrang-ed that he 
should open the intended meeting- by an Address^ after 
which the Shareholders present should be invited to 
interchang'e their views^ and bring forward and pass an}' 
Eesolutions which they mig-ht think fit. It was also 
resolved to apply to the Directors for the use of tlie hall 
in the Hudson's Bay House^ both because that appeared 
to be the suitable place for a meeting- of the Shareholders, 
and because there would be the advantag-e of being- able 
to refer to the larg-e cartoon map of the Territory which 
is suspended in the hall. A requisition to this effect Avas 
prepared^ and was readily sig-ned by Shareholders ; and 
had there been time^ man}' more sig-natures could easily 
have been obtained. 

The following- is a copy : — 

London, Sfh January, 18fi6. 

To the Secretary of The Hudson's Bay Company, Feuchurch 
Street, City. 

Sir, — "VVe the undersigned Shareholders of your Company re- 
quest you will kindly ask the Governor, Deputy- Governor, and 



62 STATEMENT. 

Committee whether fhey are agreeable to grant the use of the Com- 
pany's Hall to as many of the Shareholders as may choose to attend 
there on Wednesday the 24th inst., at three o'clock p.m., to hear a 
lecture on the subject of the Company's Territory, and to confer with 
each other as to the policy which, in present circumstances, should 
be adopted. 

We are, Sir, 

Tour obedient Servants, 

(Signed) Lionel JST. Bonar. Alexa^nder M. Sim. 

J. R. Morrison. Edward W. Watkin. 

James Dodds. J. Gerstenberg. 

C. J. H. Allen. John Macdougall. 
Henrt Sewell. 

This Requisition was forwarded to tlie Secretary, in a 
letter dated 13tli January, by Mr. Lionel N. Bonar. 

The following- answer was returned on the IGtIi 
January. 

Hudson s Bay House, 
LondoUy January \Qth, 1S6G. 

Sir, — The Governor and Committee have consulted their Broker, 
Mr. Hagell, as to the possibility of complying with the request con- 
tnined in your letter of tlie 8th instant. Mr. Hagell has reported 
as follows : — 

" In reference to the Requisition made by some of the Shaj-e- 
" holders in the Hudson's Bay Company to the Governor and 
" Committee for the use of a floor in the Company's Warehouse 
" on the 2:1th instant, I beg to report that the request could 
" not be complied with without great inconvenience and hin- 
" drance to the Company's business ; indeed, I might say it 
" would be impossible to have the room ready on that day, it 
" being the day after the Company's sale, when the whole of the 
" space will be required for the lots of Beaver, so as to be ready 
" for delivery and packing. 

"We are already mucli pressed for space this season to get 
" the assortment ready for the Eur Sale." 

The Committee therefore are obliged to refuse the apj^lication 
made to them on behalf of yourself and the Shareholders. 



STATEMENT. G3 

Under any circumstances tlie Grovernor and Committee are verj 
doubtful whether they would be justified in allowing any meeting to 
take place in the Hudson's Bay House, unless called in accordance 
with the provisions of the Charter. 

I have trie honour to be, Sir, 

Your obedient Servant, 

Thomas Fkaser, Secretary. 

Lionel N. Bonar, Esq., 58, Welbeck Street, W. 

The Eequisitionists did not deem it expedient^ under 
the circumstances mentioned by the Board, to press 
for the use of the Hall^ and arrang-ed to convene a meet 
ing- of Shareholders in the London Tavern on tlie 24th 
January. They still however^ by letter^ dated 17th 
January^ requested the use of the Map ; and the Board 
very promptly and kindly, in a letter dated 18th 
January, acceded to this request. 

A meeting* was then called by advertisement to be 
held in the London Tavern on the 24th of January, 
at 3 p.m. 

The meeting' was numerously and respectably 
attended. There were about 150 persons present, of 
whom at least 130 were Shareholders, as was ascertained 
b}^ a list taken at the door. The proceedings at the 
meeting* were more or less fully reported in all the daily 
newspapers, more particularly in the Morning Herald of 
next day, and also in the Money-Market lieview of the 
27th Januar}^ Reference is made to those reports, for 
want of space unfortunately prevents more being* done 
here, than to give the most meag're outline of the pro- 
ceedings. 

The chair was taken by Mr. Lionel N. Bonar. After 
some explanations as to the correspondence Avith the 
Board, and the objects of the meeting*, he introduced 
Mr. Dodds, who dehvered an Address, the substance 



64 STATEMENT. 

of which (with some additional points) is contained in 
the preceding' pag-es. 

At the close of the Address the thanks of the mee ting- 
to Mr. Dodds were moved by Mr. Morrison, seconded 
by Mr. Hartridg-e. At this stag-e Mr. Richard Potter, 
one of the Directors of the Company (and formerly 
Chairman of the Great Western Railway Company), 
made a few observations, which were received with 
marked interest by the meeting-. He spoke favourably 
of the object of the meeting', described the Address as 
^^ able, eloquent, and temperate," and added, that '' lie 
believed that the statements they had just heard must 
exercise an important influence on the settlement of that 
question " 

Mr. Gerstenberg" then moved the first Resolution, 
seconded by Mr. Henry Sewell, and unanimously 
passed : 

This meeting, understanding from various concurrent reports, 
that negotiations are going on for the sale of the territorial rights of 
the Hudson's Bay Company, and that the lands immediately avail- 
able for settlement amount to at least 40,000,000 acres, besides the 
other enormous tracts of country possessed by the Company, are of 
opinion that the price or compensation to be accepted should not be 
less that five millions sterling, being at the rate of 2* 6d per acre for 
the 40,000,000 acres ; otherwise the Company ought themselves im- 
mediately to carry out a plan for the systematic colonization and 
settlement of their territory. 

Mr. Hartridg'e moved the second resolution, seconded 
by Mr. Macdoug-all, and unanimously passed : 

A vote of thanks to the Directors of the Hudson's Bay Company 
for the use of the map, accompanied with a request to them for the 
use of their room, with a view of holding a meeting to consider the 
foregoing resolution. 



STATEMENT. 65 

Mr. L. N. Bonar (Chairman) in a letter of 25th Jan- 
uary^ forwarded the two Hesolutions to the Secretary of 
the Company to be laid before the Board. The folio wing- 
was the answer : — 

Hudson's Bay House, 
Londouy January 30^7*, 1866. 

Sir, — I am directed by the Grovernor and Committee to acknow- 
ledge the receipt of your letter of the 25tli instant, together with 
copy of Eesolutions passed by the Meeting held at the London 
Tavern on the previous day. 

In reply to that portion of your letter which has reference to the 
second Eesolution I am directed to refer you to the letter which I 
had the honour to address to you on the 16th instant, and to add 
that the question, having been again submitted to the consideration 
of the Board, they have with regret come to the conclusion that the 
request cannot be acceded to. 

I have the honour to be, Sir, 

Tour obedient Servant, 

Thomas Feasee, Secretary. 
L. N. Bonar, 



Mr. Bonar^ after consulting- with several of the g-entle- 
men who had been acting- along with him^ returned the 
following reply : — 

53, Welhech Street, W. 

February 3, 1866. 

Sir, — I have referred your letter of the 31st ult. to the gentlemen 
acting in behalf of the Meeting of the Hudson's Bay Shareholders, 
held at the London Tavern on the 24th January. 

They desire me to add to my former communication : that the 
Meeting in question was attended by about 150 persons, of whom at 
least 130 were shareholders, according to a list taken at the door 
and now in my possession. I can bear testimony, as Chairman, that 
the Meeting was most respectable, and that the Eesolutions— which 
you have already laid before the Board, one of them being a request 
that the Directors would allow the use of their Hall for a further 
discussion of the subject — were unanimously passed, and with the 



66 STATEMENT. 

strongest expressions of approval. Tliey hoped, that such a requc 
from such a considerable body of Shareholders, acting in no par 
spirit, but solely for the good of the whole body, would have be 
acceded to. 

They feel bound to record their dissent from the view, that the 
is anything in the Charter to prevent compliance with such a reques 
The Charter is characterised by nothing so much as by the u 
limited power which it confers upon the Company (that is upon t" 
Shareholders) to hold any number of meetings and make any orde 
and regulations for the common good and government of the Ass 
ciation, and we humbly think it would only have been in harmoi 
with this wise liberality of the Charter, if the Board had pe 
mitted the Shareholders to hold their further meeting- in the 
own house. 

I remain, Sir, 

Tour obedient servant, 

Lionel N. Bonae. 

To the Secretary of the Hudson's Bay Company. 

The Secretaiy^ wrote this further letter, in reference 1 
the 2nd Resolution. 

Hudson's Bay House, 

London, February 6th, 1866. 

Sir, — 1 am directed by the Governor and Committee to ackno\ 
ledge your letter of February 3rd. 

The Grovernor and Committee think that their reasons for adop 
ing the conclusion already announced to you are perfectly soun 
and are most consistent with the interests of the Shareholders. 

If a set of Shareholders, entertaining one set of opinions on ar 
given point were desirous of holding a public meeting in the Cor 
pany's premises, it is possible that another set of Shareholders, di 
fering from the former, might be desirous of doing the same thin; 
and thus two sets of Resolutions contradicting each other, migl 
issue from the Hudson's Bay House, with the apparent authority < 
the Company. 

The above case is put only as an illustration of one of the man 
inconveniences which might arise, and is by no means the onl 
difficulty which the Governor and Committee perceive in complyin 
with your request. 



STATEMENT. 67 

They desire me to say that they have refused that request with 
regret, and with no intention to cast any doubt on the respectability 
or intelligence of the gentlemen composing the Meeting, 

I am, Sir, 

Tour obedient servant, 

Thomas Fiiaser. 
Lionel N. Bonar, Esq. 

On the 10th February^ Mr. Bonar addressed the fol- 
lowing- letter to the Board : — 

53, Welbeck Street, W. 

February 10th, 1866. 

Sir, — I duly received your letter of the 6th inst, but before 
acknowledging the receipt, I had to consult the gentlemen with 
whom I have acted in this matter. 

We understood in your letter of 31st that the use of the Hall 
was refused from a view, that the Charter debarred the use of it for 
Meetings of Shareholders. "We could not help expressing our dis- 
sent from that view. But the reason, which you now state, is a 
point, where the Board are entitled to use some discretion, and with 
that discretion we do not wish unduly to interfere. 

The answer of the Board has thus been given to the second Eeso- 
lution, which I had the honour to communicate. It only remains, 
therefore, to know if they are disposed to return any answer to the 
first B/Csolution, which has hitherto not been noticed by you, and to 
which the Meeting attached much more importance than to the 
second. In fact, the second was only of value as a means to afford 
a renewed opportunity to discuss the first. 

The Shareholders present evinced in every way a strong desire 
that some policy should be adopted by the Company in the spirit of 
that Eesolution. I am anxious, therefore, in the discharge of my 
duty to receive any answer which the Board may be disposed to 
make to the recommendation contained in that Eesolution. 

I remain, Sir, 

Tour obedient servant, 

Lionel N. Bonae. 

To the Secretary of the Hudson's Bay Company. 

r 2 



68 STATEMENT. 

To the above letter the Board returned the following" 
answer. 

Sudsoii's Bay House, 

London, February 14:tJi, 1866. 

Sir, — I beg to acknowledge tlie receipt of your letter of tlie lOth 
inst. which I have laid before the Governor and Committee, 

In reply, I am directed to state that it has never been the inten- 
tion of the Governor and Committee to close finally with any offer 
made for the purchase of the Hudson's Bay Territory, or any portion 
thereof, without submitting its terms to a General Meeting of the 
Shareholders, lawfully called ; and it is in their opinion inexpedient 
that any definite maximum or minimum should be adopted by the 
Committee beforehand as the value of their territory. 

When the Governor and Committee are satisfied that a scheme of 
Colonization can be pursued with advantage, they will be quite ready 

to act upon such scheme. 

I am, Sir, 

Tour obedient servant, 
(Signed) Thomas Leaser. 
Lionel N. Bonar, Esq. 

This last communication from the Board^ complethig* 
their answer to the two Resolutions passed at the Meet- 
ing- of the 24th January, naturally closes the correspond- 
ence for the present; and concludes the first scene of the 
movement which has commenced on the part of the Share- 
holders. 

When a Company which once paid so high as 50 per 
cent.; and even so late as 1847-56 used to range from 10 
to 20 per cent., falls miserably off, and yields only 4^, 
with no prospect of increase, rather a fear of further de- 
cline, if the old policy be maintained, and where there is 
no indication of any change of policy. Shareholders 
must at last bestir themselves, and show that thev feel 
themselves entitled to some information, some guidance, 
from those whom they have deputed to govern them, 
and who have superior means of knowledge, not for 



STATEMENT. 69 

their own gTatification^ not to keep secretly amongst 
themselves^ but to impart in a discreet and judicious 
manner to the body of the Shareholders. 

To modify the old and introduce a new system will 
require time and perseverance^ a spirit of activity and a 
just sense of their own rights among'st the Shareholders^ 
and a more frank and confiding- disposition amongst . the 
Directors. There need be no wonder then if the movement 
which originated among'st certain of the Shareholders only 
in January last has not yet produced any astonishing" 
chang-e. None but the over-sang-uine and inexperienced 
could expect any such miracle. 

But the movement^ thoug-h short and g-entle, and meant 
to be an appeal to g-ood sense, not an exhibition of force^ 
has not been barren of results. Among-st these may be 
enumerated: — 

1st. That for the first time since the reconstruction of 
the Company in 1863^ the Shareholders^ roused by the 
critical state of their affairs^ and no doubt disappointed 
by the continued silence and non- direction of their Direc- 
tors^ have been drawing- into a bond of union, into a mould 
of joint action, and are not now likely to break up this 
connection until they see their affairs placed on a clear 
and distinct footing-, and the future policy of the Com- 
pany firmly fixed and positively announced. 

2nd. That a considerable number of them, at least 130, 
representing- no doubt many more who could not or did 
not attend the meeting*, have unanimously and emphati- 
cally declared, that their territory and territorial rights 
ought not to be sold and transferred except at a full and 
adequate price (say £5,000,000)^ and if these terms 
cannot at once be obtained, that then the Company for 
itself ought immediately to prepare and carry into exe- 



70 STATEMENT. 

cution a plan for the colonization of their territory, and 
for realising' in that form profits on their capital^ which 
it is now vain to expect from the mere prosecution of the 
Fur-Trade. 

8rd. That the Board^ in answer to this Resolution^ 
have given two categ^orical pledg*es — (a) that they will not 
close finally with any offer of purchase without bringing' 
the whole terms before a regularly constituted meeting* 
of the Shareholders 3 (b) that when satisfied of the 
merits and expediency of any scheme of colonization^ 
they will be prepared to act upon it. 

If these results are not a revolution^ they are a 
lirocfress. 

Growing* union among^st the Shareholders — a firmer 
conviction among'st them of the security and value of 
their property — the beginning* of a clearer understand- 
ing* and accord between the Directors and Shareholders ; 
— this is no bad fruit of two months of a very quiet and 
temperate movement. 

If continued sincerely^ prudently and firmly^ the 
Hudson's Bay Company, by the month of June next^ 
will stand clear of clouds^ will have a defined policy 3 
every cold shadow between Directors and Shareholders 
will disappear, and they will equally rejoice in the pros- 
pect of reaping- the full fruits of their propert}^, besides 
the blessings which the}' will be the means of bestowing- 
upon countless g-enerations of the human family. 

It must constantly be remembered, that in their 
Prospectus of 1863; on the faith of which the recon- 
structed Company was formed, the Directors bound 
themselves by this most absolute and solemn pledg-e : 
^' The Southern District ovUl he opened to Europecm 
colonization under a liberal and systematic scheme of 



STATEMENT. 71 

land settlement/^ As this Prospectus is now difficult 
to obtain^ and is the pact on Avhich the capital of 
£2^000^000 was raised^ it is repubhshed at the end of 
this Statement. 

Unless words are breath, unless Directors are decoy- 
ducks^ unless two millions are a bauble — This Pledge 

MUST BE REDEEMED ! 

Althoug-h the movement of the Shareholders up to 
this point has not been fruitless^ but has at least morall}^ 
advanced the question, yet there are many causes of 
misgiving", many warning" notes of alarm* and if the 
Shareholders are not to lose the advantag-e they have 
g*ained^ if they are to g'o forwards and not backwards, 
they oug'ht to continue and strengthen their bond of 
association, until the present crisis is safely over, until 
their interests are secure, and until the final arrang-e- 
ment (whether for sale or settlement) is definitely fixed. 

Till the fate of Ruperfs Land is decided, let the 
Shareholders maintain their association. 

The Board's letter of the 14th February, without 
scanning* it too critically, implies the possibility that the 
terms of an}^ offer of purchase may be kept back from 
the Shareholders until neg-otiations have proceeded too 
far, and the honour of the Company is too much com- 
mitted, for the Shareholders to refuse their assent^ even 
thoug'h the price were most inadequate and nug-atory. 
It implies that the previous question may never be 
submitted to the Shareholders — which certainly oug'ht — 
" Is it your wish to sell, or is it your wish to settle your 
territor}^ ?" It implies that the Directors have no plan 
of land-settlement, although they volunteered the pledg-e 
in 1863, as one of the conditions on which the capital 
was subscribed and paid. It implies that they may in- 



72 STATEMENT. 

definitely stave oflP any plan sugg-ested to them^ on the 
plea mentioned in tlieir letter — that they are not satisfied 
that such a ^^ a scheme of colonization can be pursued 
with advantag*e.'' 

Whilst the Board's letter is too oracular to be reas- 
suring", hints are ever and anon appearing* in well- 
informed quarters as if neg-otiations were actually going- 
on, and near their completion, of which (if true) the 
Shareholders oug-ht to have timeous notice, and which 
they oug-ht to be called upon to sanction by a preliminary 
vote. Thus in the City article of the Monmig Post of 
21st February, discussing* the transfer of the territory to 
Canada — the writer states very strong-ly : 

" "We have reason to believe that the sum demanded by the Com- 
pany is considered reasonable both by the Canadian Government and 
the Colonial Minister, and under these circumstances tlie ivliole trans- 
action may le finally settled in the course of a few weehs^"* 

Is this so ? are our Government and Canada, without any 
reference to the Shareholders, coolly pinning- a ticket on 
our property, and are our Directors mixed in the trans- 
action ? And if this be the case, how could the Share- 
holders repudiate the barg-ain, however injurious or 
unfair, if they are not to be called tog-ether and consulted 
till just before the matter isjinally closed '} That these 
reports should prevail, and disquiet the minds of Share- 
holders, is an instance of the baneful effect of a secret 
system of manag-ement. 

In an extraordinary case, like the contemplated 
transfer of their whole propert}^. Shareholders are not 
simply entitled to have the matter submitted to them 
before it is finally closed ; they are entitled to be consulted, 
and their sanction received, hefore the negotiations are 
seriously entered upon at all. It is a perverted and 
arbitrary view, that Directors are empowered to com- 



STATEMENT. 73 

mence negotiating^ for the transfer of a Company's 
property^ without previously getting any authority what- 
ever from the Shareholders. 

To keenly watch the course of events^ to determinedly 
guard and preserve their interests^ to save the Directors 
from any political pressure^ is the plain and undeniable 
dut}^ of the Shareholders 5 and they can only do so 
effectually by acting in a united and concerted manner, 
until all danger has blown past. 

An opportunity will be again afforded for them to 
continue the movement which has so far favourably 
begun. On ascertaining that there is a general feeling 
of this kind amongst them, means will be taken to form an 
Association for the better protection of common interests. 
A letter is attached to the end of every copy of this 
Pamphlet forwarded to Shareholders, which may be 
signed and returned to the address given. If it appear 
from the letters so returned, that a sufficient number 
of Shareholders are willing to co-operate, not in any 
factious way, but simply for self protection, a meetings 
will be convened to enable them to form an Association, 
and agree upon a Programme of action, to be brought 
in due time before the consideration of the Directors. 



PROSPECTUS, 18G3. 
THE 

INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL SOCIETY 

LIMITED 

AKE PEEPAEED TO EECEIVE 

Subscriptions for the Issue at Par of Capital Stock, 

IN 

THE HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY, 

INCOBPORATED BY ROYAL CHARTER, 1670. 

The Stock will be issued in Certificates of £20 each, and the 
Instalments will be payable as follows : — 

«_ , . _ ^ ATX- < To be returned in the event 

£1 being 5 per cent, on Application. J ^^ ^^ Allotment being made. 



£20 



"With an option of prepayment in full on Allotment, or on either of 
the days fixed for payment of the instalments, under discount, at 
the rate of 4 per cent, per annum. 

The Capital of the Hudson's Bay Company has been duly fixed at 
£2,000,000, of which amount the International Financial 
Society Limited have obtained, and are prepared to offer to the 
Public, £1,930,000. 

The Sul)scrihers will he entitled to an Interest, corresiwndinr/ to the avionnt of their 
Siihscription, in — 

1. The A.iscts (^exclusive oj Noa. 2 and 3) of the Hudson's Bay Company, recently 

and specially valned hy competent Valuers at £1,023,569. 

2. ITie Landed Territory of the Company, held under their Charter, and. which 

extends over an esfimoted area of more than 1,400,000 square miles, or 
upwards of 896,000,000 acres. 

3. A Cash Balance of £370,000. 

The present net income, available for dividend amo7igst Sfochholdcrs of the Company, 
secures a minimnm interest cxceedinij A per cent, on the above £2,000,000 Stoch. 



4 


j> 


20 


>> 


J> 


on Allotment. 


5 


>j 


25 


j> 


J> 


on 1st Sept., 1863. 


5 


jj 


25 


5> 


>> 


on 2nd Nov., 1863. 


5 


j> 


25 


JJ 


>> 


on 1st January, 1864. 



PROSPECTUS^ 1863. 75 



THE DIRECTORS OF THE HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY ARE 
AS UNDER :— 

The Right Honourable Sir EDMUND HEAD, Bart., K.C.B. 
(Late Governor General of Canada), Governor. 

CURTIS MIRANDA LAMPSON, Esq. (C. M. Lampson and Co.), 
Deputy Governm\ 
EDEN COL VILE, Esq., Hudson's Bay House, Fenchurch Street. 
GEORGE LYALL, M.P., Headley Park, SuiTcy. 
DANIEL MEINERTZHAGEN, Esq., (F. Huth and Co.) 
JAMES STEWART HODGSON, Esq., (Finlay, Hodgson and Co.) 
JOHN HENRY WILLIAM SCHRODER, Esq., (J. H. Schroder and Co.) 
RICHARD POTTER, Esq., Standish House, Gloucestershire. 



The Hudson's Bay Company were incorporated under a Eoyal 
Charter granted by King Charles II. in 1670, by the name of " The 
Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading into 
Hudson's Bay," and, by the Charter, a vast tract of territory was 
vested in the Company, together with the sole right of trade and 
commerce, and all " mines royal," as well then discovered as not dis- 
covered, within the said territory. 

The operations of the Company, which, with slight exceptions, 
have been hitherto exclusively of a trading character, have been 
prosecuted from the date of the Charter to the present day. 

It has become evident that the time has arrived when those opera- 
tions must be extended, and the immense resources of the Company's 
Territory, lying as it does between Canada and British Columbia, 
should be developed in accordance with the industrial spirit of the 
age, and the rapid advancement which colonization has made in the 
countries adjacent to the Hudson Bay territories. 

The average net annual profits of the Company, (after setting 
aside 40 per cent, of them as remuneration to the factors and ser- 
vants at the Company's posts and stations) for the ten years ending 
the 31st May, 1862, amount to £81,000, or upwards of 4 per cent. 
on the present nominal capital of £2,000,000. A portion only of 
this income has been distributed as dividend, while the remainder is 
represented in the assets and balances. The assets of the Company, 
in which the Subscribers will be entitled to an interest correspond- 
ing to the amount of their Subscription, will consist of goods in the 
interior, on shipboard, and other stock in trade, including shipping, 
business premises, and other buildings necessary for carrying on the 
fur trade, in addition to which there will be funds immediately 
available for the proposed extended operations of the Company, 



76 PROSPECTUS, 1863. 

derived partly from the cash balance of the Hudson's Bay Company, 
and partly from the new issue of Stock, and amounting in the whole 
to a sum not less than £370,000. 

The Company's territory, embraces an estimated area of more than 
1,400,000 square miles, or eight hundred and ninety-six millions of 
acres, of which a large area, on the Southern Frontier, is well adapted 
for European colonization. The soil of this portion of the territory 
is fertile, producing, in abundance, wheat, and other cereal crops, 
and is capable of sustaining a numerous population. It contains 
1,400 miles of navigable lakes and rivers, running, for the greater 
part, east and west, which constitute an important feature in plans 
for establishil3g the means of communication between the Atlantic 
and Pacific Oceans, across the Continent of British North America, 
as well as for immediate settlement in the intervening country. The 
territory is, moreover, rich in mineral wealth, including coal, lead, 
and iron. 

In addition to its Chartered territory, the Company possesses the 
following valuable landed property : Several plots of land in British 
Columbia, occupying most favourable sites at the mouths of rivers, 
the titles to which have been confirmed by Her Majesty's Govern- 
ment ; farms, building sites in Vancouver's Island ; and in Canada 
ten square miles at Lacloche, on Lake Huron, and tracts of land at 
fourteen other places. 

The trading operations of the Company are chiefly carried on in 
the fur-bearing and northern portion of the territory, where the 
climate is too severe for European colonization. These trading 
operations will be actively continued, and as far as possible extended, 
whilst the management will be judiciously economized. 

Consistently with these objects, the outlying estates and valuable 
farms will be realised where the land is not required for the use of 
the Company — the southern district will be opened to European colo- 
nization, under a liberal and systematic scheme of land settlement. 
Possessing a staff* of factors and officers who are distributed in small 
centres of civilisation over the territory, the Company can, without 
creating new and costly establishments, inaugurate the new policy of 
colonization, and at the same time dispose of mining grants. 

With the view of providing the means of telegraphic and postal 
communication between Canada and British Columbia, across the 
Company's territory, and thereby of connecting the Atlantic and 
Pacific Oceans, by an exclusively British route, negociations have 



PROSPECTUS, 1863. 77 

been pending for some time past between certain parties and Her 
Majesty's Government and the representatives of the Government 
of Canada, and preliminary arrangements for tlie accomplishment of 
these objects have been made through Her Majesty's Government 
(subject to the final sanction of the Colonies), based upon a 5 per 
cent, guarantee from the Government of Canada, British Columbia, 
and Vancouver Island. In further aid of these Imperial objects, 
Her Majesty's Government have signified their intention to make 
grants of land to the extent of about 1,000,000 acres, in portions of 
the Crown territory traversed by the proposed telegraphic line. 

One of the first objects of the Company will be to examine the 
facilities and consider the best means for carrying out this most 
important work, and there can be little doubt that it will be 
successfully executed either by the Hudson's Bay Company itself, 
or with their aid and sanction. 

Eor this, as well as for the other proposed objects, Mr. Edward 
"Watkin, who is now in Canada, will be commissioned, with other 
gentlemen specially qualified for the duty, to visit the Red Eiver and 
southern districts, to consult the Officers of the Company there, and 
to report as to the best and safest means of giving effect to the con- 
templated operations. 

Applications for allotments of Certificates of Stock of £20 each, 
to be made to the Inteenational Eii«"ancial Society Limited, 
at their Offices, 54, Old Broad Street, E.C. 

A preference in allotment will be given to parties hitherto holders 
of Stock in the Hudson's Bay Company, and to the Shareholders in 
the International Einancial Society Limited. 



NOTICE. 

Shareholdees are requested to sign and fill up the 
following Letter, and return it at their earliest 
possible convenience. 



Lionel N. Bonae, Esq. 

53, Welhech Street, 
London, W. 

(Date.) 

SlE, 

I approve of the Shareholders of the Hudson's Bay 
Company uniting at the present time into an Association for the 
protection of their interests and the improvement of their property. 

I am, Sir, 
Your obedient Servant, 



Signature 
Address 



JVb. of Shares held_ 



i-fc N 10 



itT^ 



v^ NO V^ 



,S THE 

HUDSOl^'S BAY COMPANY, 



ITS 



il POSITIOI^ AND PROSPECTS. 



THE SUBSTANCE OF AN ADDRESS, DELIVEEED AT A MEETING OP 

THE SHAREHOLDERS, IN THE LONDON TAVERN, 

ON THE 24tH JANUARY, 1866. 



BY 



JAMES DODDS. 



mtti) a fHap. 



^ SECOND THOUSAXD. 



LONDON : 
EDWAKU STANFORD, 6, CHARING CROSS S.W. 

AND 

A. H. BAILY & CO. 3, ROYAL iTXCHANGE BUILDINGS, E.G. 

1866. 



kcs 



